By Sarah MayberryOkay. I'm going to assume you're all still lolling in a post-Turkey haze like I am and go easy on the blog today.
I hope you all had a lovely time with your families and friends - we had a very nice Christmas, with lunch at my Mum's place and then dinner with my father at my sister's place. There was lots of food - naturally - including my maternal grandmother's plum pudding. This is the highlight of every Christmas and nothing is guaranteed to get my family drooling faster than mention of Nan's pudd. Sadly, Nan passed a few years ago at the grand old age of 92 (not bad, eh?) but her recipe lives on through me and my sister.
I make a pudding every year for my husband's family, while my sister makes one for our family. It's a bit of a mission, since it has to be boiled in a calico pudding cloth for 6 hours, but it's worth it. Oh, is it worth it!!! Moist, full of fruit and brandy, it's a very simple pudding - no suet, no nuts or candied fruit, just dates, sultanas, currants, and sultanas and lots of eggs, butter and sugar etc. We serve it with my Nan's brandy sauce, which is basically a white sauce with lots of sugar and brandy in it, along with a generous dollop of vanilla ice cream. Yum.
One of the other big traditions of our family Christmas is the humble Christmas cracker. Without fail they are on the table at each place setting, and before the meal starts we all take turns trying to be the "winner" by being the one left with the largest portion of cracker after
the smoke has cleared. (For the record, I didn't "win" a single cracker this year. Maybe I need to work on my hand strength...?) Once the crackers have been cracked, we all dutifully don the tissue-paper party hat inside and investigate to see what manner of plastic foolishness our cracker has bestowed upon us. Plastic thimbles, racehorses and birds abounded this year. Past years have yielded miniature tape measures, whistles and word puzzle slide-y thingies. (I always wonder what the workers think in the factories where they produce these little bits of plastic pointlessness. They must think we are very, very strange people to be hankering after a thimble suitable only for a Smurf.)
With our hats on and out booty investigated and appraised, we move on to the main event - the Christmas cracker jokes. Without fail, they are totally lame and groan-worthy - and I love them with a deep and abiding passion. So, in the spirit of giving, I wanted to share some of my favourite Christmas cracker jokes with you today:
Q. How do you make a sausage roll?
A. Put it on a sloping tin roof
(I am not sure if this joke will translate. Do you have party pies and sausage rolls in NA? If not, you are missing out on some seriously bad-for-you yum. And you won't get this joke.)
Q. Why do cows have bells?
A. Because their horns don't work.
Q. What did the beaver say to the Christmas Tree?
A. Nice gnawing you.
Q. What athlete is warmest in winter?
A. A long jumper.
Q. What happened to the man who stole an advent calendar?
A. He got 25 days.
Q. What do you get if you cross a bell with a skunk?
A. Jingle smells!
If you want to join in the fun, share your own (bad or good) Christmas cracker gems. I promise I will groan out loud if they are really lame. Seasons greetings to you all!
18 comments:
We had turkey on Boxing Day at my sister's place. Had Christmas crackers also. Had hats and weird prizes like cuff links, wine openers and a small screwdriver set. Here's a couple of jokes from our crackers.
How does the man in the moon cut his hair? ~ Eclipse it.
What animal shouldn't you play cards with? ~ A Cheetah.
Hey, Kaelee, those are pretty good cracker jokes! You squeezed a harumph of amusement out of my hubby. Your booty sounds better than ours, however. Cufflinks! Oh la la!
I wish I could remember the lame jokes we all found in our crackers this year, but they are never memorable. My daughter has a weird collection of cracker creatures etc. from over the years.
Hi Marybelle. I knew someone got a kick out of those weird plastic things in the crackers. I can imagine her collection! A host of the strange and the wonderful.
I've never heard of Christmas Crackers. I've seen poppers around New Years (that look like your pictures), but I thought they just had confetti in them.
Will now go looking for Christmas Crackers.
What did the snowman eat for breadfast?~Frosted Flakes
Never heard of these traditions before but they do sound pretty fun. In my family we do a lot of Joke gifts this year was my sixteen year old niece who wants a car. So everyone in the family got her a hot wheels car for Christmas. She also got an old car key to start them with. She was not real happy with her cars.
What do you call it when a bunch of sheep roll down a hill?'
A Lambslide
How does a dog know who is calling him on this mobile phone?
Collar ID
We had Standing Rib Roast and French Onion Soup. We had a very nice Christmas.
Hey Rogenna. I was wondering if Christmas crackers were universal. I guess they aren't! But there's nothing like sitting at a table full of people wearing funny hats to make you feel as though you're really celebrating.
Virginia, your niece will laugh at that matchbox car one day. I hope she hangs onto it, she could pass it on to her children. It could become a family heirloom...
Hi Tammy. I LOVE the lambslide joke. I will be pulling that one out of my bag of tricks next time I have an audience. Your Christmas sounds delicious!
The only reason I knew what a cracker even was, is because one of our co-workers has family in Wales and they send them over to her here in Hawaii :) They are pretty cool... our coworker was wearing the party hat all day at work.
Sorry don't have any jokes today... can't think!
We did Xmas crackers too, Sarah, but can't remember a single joke. The upmarket crackers bought by my mother had nail clippers, a sewing kit, tweezers and screwdriver heads, all of which found a home. But the jokes were still lame.
The pudding looks devine!
Karina
You didn't mention the funny hats :)
Hi Sarah! Sounds like you had a wonderful Christmas. I have never heard of Christmas Crackers, but now I am going to have to find some for next year, they sound fun.
Wishing you a Happy New Year!
Oh,no. I forgot the Christmas crackers. I bought them for the grandbaby in November and tucked them away for a Chrstmas dinner time surprise... I always forget something but as long as it isn't the turkey no one minds too much.
LOL, Sarah, thank you for the jokes! I really did laugh out loud at the beaver one. Thank you also for the glimpse into your Christmas--it sounds like it was lovely. No pudding or Christmas crackers in our part of the world, but we did have the traditional wassail. One of my favorite Christmas jokes:
What do you call a bunch of chess players bragging about their games in a hotel lobby?
Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer! :-)
Happy New Year!
Christmas at your house sounds like fun, Sarah. Thanks for the cracker jokes; they made me laugh. :)
We had a lovely meal. My daughter and I brought it to my mother's house this year, since she is not well enough to come to mine. Your grandmother's pudding sounds lovely. I think you should share the recipe! My daughter made a persimmon pudding for Thanksgiving this year with a brandy hard sauce that sounds something like it.
We don't do crackers for Christmas here, though I did actually see some in Sam's Club a week or so ago. In my part of the U.S. at least, those types of things are more typical of New Year's Eve than Christmas.
One of my favorite stories still is when my dog was a pup and kept picking up pull-string "pop" bottles (like your crackers, not the soft drink variety) in her mouth. Nothing I could do would dissuade her until one day, as I sat at our computer desk, I heard a loud pop come from underneath. I jumped up, thinking that the wiring had exploded or something underneath the desk, when my dog ran out trailing the confetti-like stuff from one of the pop bottles. That broke her of the habit!
My "pop" bottles don't have jokes, though, so I have none to share. I'm not sure what party pies are, but I suspect they are not as simple as pies made for a party. So, we probably don't have those, either. Our sausage rolls are 1 lb. portions of uncooked sausage in a tube, though my husband's coworkers always request my sausage balls (a combination of Bisquick, sausage, and cheese -- also not so good for you) on potluck days.
Love all the jokes! Especially this one:
What do you call a bunch of chess players bragging about their games in a hotel lobby?
Chess nuts boasting in an open foyer! :-)
Post a Comment