What to put in homemade christmas crackers

calvin_holden · 8 November 2018 at 12:39PM

Christmas Crackers are the one thing I have responsibility for each year, so I do try and mix it up a bit. Here are some of the themes tried and tested so far…

Raffle Tickets – A good way of avoiding the constraints of small crackers. You can buy some sizeable gifts varying in quality and expense to suit your budget. Adding more tickets in some crackers compared to others seemed to increase the excitement a bit. It is a challenge thinking of things that everyone would like should they be lucky enough to win, but after the raffle they did do a swap shop style exchange which worked well.
Personalised Top Trumps – Top trumps (the company) do offer a personalised service, but I found making them from scratch myself straightforward (and cheaper!). Once you have a template (using excel and some clip art), you can add a picture of each of your guests, select your stats for each of them (such as Christmas cheer, age, quantity of hair etc), and print them out on some thin card. They fit easily inside the cracker. Each person played against the person next to them in turn, the loser being eliminated until you get your winner. I had a few prizes, all of which can of course be much larger than a cracker, given this format.
Pure unadulterated money! - A penny in one, 50p in another, pound coins of differing numbers in some. A few fivers, a tenna and top prize a twenty pound note (budgets didn’t quite stretch to a £50!). This undoubtedly caused the most excitement of all themes, but appreciate will not be to everyone’s taste / budgets. Luckily my wife won back the £20 (wasn’t a fix, honest)!
Lottery Tickets. Now I did steel this idea from several suggestions on such threads as this. What worked well though, was putting varying quantities in each cracker, so some had 1, some 2, etc up to one cracker having 10. Again, my wife struck it lucky winning £25 back for the household accounts!
Personalised pictures – In one particular austerity affected year, I took most of the expense out of the exercise by creating lots of photo shopped pictures of the family. This was more of an investment of time, than of money on this occasion. So for instance, I cut my brothers face out and added it on to that of Donald Trumps body (the famous picture of Donald stalking Hillary Clinton in one of their presidential debates!). I don’t have any fancy editing software, a free copy of ‘paint’ worked just fine.
Hot dogs or legs – Some of you will be familiar with this as was a thing a few years ago. Pictures of what looks like legs, but are in fact hot dogs (and vice versa). So, I printed off lots of these (freely available via a google search), and added 2 in each cracker. On the day, we went around the table with each person trying to guess their 2 photos. Those that got through that round, played against each other with more I had printed, until we got a 1.2.3.
Personalised Chocolate Bars – Each person had their own bar of chocolate, personalised with their photo, name and a few comedic words about them on the wrapper. The smallest size of chocolate bar available just about fit in to the crackers.
Small gifts – I did this for my first year, and as already mentioned in previous posts, they are difficult to find. But not impossible! There are numerous gift sites that have an enormous selection to choose from, its just a case of sifting through the small and appropriate ones for your audience. I went mostly for comedy items, but things like USB sticks work well also.

Each year I add a few sweets/chocolates in every cracker, and also find ‘good’ jokes on line to use instead of your typical default ones. Tim Vine and Jimmy Carr (he does do some clean jokes!) are great for this. I have also used amazing facts instead of jokes, which seem to go down well, again, can be found from googleing. We have also found a new time to open the crackers, instead of at the start of the meal, we wait until after dinner (before pudding), so to make time for everyone to be involved. I tend to buy the fill your own crackers in the January sales, and then store them away as they are disappointedly expensive given there are no gifts inside of them.
Hope this helps!!:beer:

dotchas · 17 November 2018 at 12:52AM

I have put small Christmas baubles in Crackers

building_with_lego · 25 November 2018 at 6:10PM

I'm changing my game slightly this year, and rather than try to find useful things to fit inside a loo roll I am making my own, larger, tubes.

Fillings: clear tree baubles, for each family member to fill in their own style
car games
insect lollies from £land- 5 in a pack
scratchcards

Snaps and hats bought from ebay; jokes- I have many, many terrible jokes, so will print off a few

43722 · 25 November 2018 at 6:53PM

I have developed my very own game, called "Christmas Cracker Kamikaze"
You need a normal box of Crackers. Also a cardboard box, or crate etc, filled with straw, xmas paper, whatever. In the box you hide a number of small presents, (wrapped) some good, some rubbish. I tie ribbons to each present, and dangle them enticingly outside the box.
At Cracker time, two people pull a cracker in the usual way,BUT the winner does not look inside the cracker. Instead they decide if they want to keep their cracker winner, or pull an alternative present ribbon from the box. If they decide to keep the cracker gift, their "cracker opponent" gets to pull on a ribbon instead.
All good fun. And I always put in at leat one ribbon which has no present attached to it..
I am going on Dragon's Den next year lol...

bex88 · 23 November 2020 at 12:40AM

franklee said:

One year I purchased a large bag of modelling balloons, split them up and put some in each cracker. I took along a balloon pump too and we each made our own balloon hats to wear.

This is a Fantastic idea!

swish123 · 28 November 2020 at 6:33PM

culpepper said:

We did badges one year using a badge kit and printing out the graphics.
Another year we did keyrings and badges and magnets using a harry potter theme and resin. (I still have my hogwarts keyring).
One year we did pencil toppers all made from fimo. They were animals and birds.
One year we did decorated pens and pencils which we painted in sports team colours.
We used to hunt for jokes too online and print them out ,roll them up and poke them in.
Everyone had a sweet in their cracker (from the tin).

I like the key ring idea. Might use that.

SmilingOwl · 29 November 2020 at 10:27AM

How about the LEGO Minifigure Blind Bags? Can be found in most Supermarkets and many high street stores. Perfect gift for young and old!

Stevenn3 · 20 December 2020 at 11:43AM

qwiksave said:

I've just bought a set of moustaches to put in my homemade crackers - should create some fun for my family of boys. I will probably wear one too though

What to put in homemade christmas crackers

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