Christmas cracker tradition of wearing festive hats is believed to date back to Roman times and the Saturnalia celebrations, which also involved decorative headgear. Christmas crackers are also associated with Knut's parties, held in Sweden at the end of the Christmas season. The "Oxford English Dictionary" records the use of "cracker bonbons" and the pulling of "crackers" from 1847. Tradition tells of how Tom Smith of London invented crackers in 1847. He created the crackers as a development of his bon-bon sweets, which he sold in a twist of paper (the origins of the traditional sweet-wrapper). As sales of bon-bons slumped, Smith
The Man Who Invented Christmas (film) The Man Who Invented Christmas (film) The Man Who Invented Christmas is a 2017 biographical drama film directed by Bharat Nalluri and written by Susan Coyne based on the book of the same name by Les Standiford. It stars Dan Stevens, Christopher Plummer, and Jonathan Pryce. The plot follows Charles Dickens (Stevens) at the time when he wrote "A Christmas Carol", and how Dickens' fictional character Ebenezer Scrooge (Plummer) was influenced by his real-life father, John Dickens (Pryce). It was released by Bleecker Street in the United States on 22 November 2017 and in the United Kingdom on 1 December