Ah! Turns out that you are correct.

I have not introduced my family to Christmas crackers. They were always a bit of a joke in our house while I was growing up. We got the most amusement from deciding who had the most pointless item.

My husband had a British father and an Irish mother and while he was born in Canada, his parents and grandparents carried over many traditions from their native countries. Christmas crackers was one of them. The grandkiddies get a kick out of them.

No, you were correct—I was talking about decorative Christmas crackers, not edible ones!

Costco was out of crackers, in fact it was out of almost everything Christmas entirely. Had to go to a shop called Tuesday Morning to get some, they look really posh.

We have one of those here as well. Have never ventured into it. Enjoy your crackers.

Thanks. We're hosting Christmas for the first time in years so we had to get something British in there. Going to try to get a goose. No room for it in the freezer so they might be sold out in the week before we go to get one, but that's $60 I won't be too bothered about not having to spend.

If there is a Hutterite colony in your area, that is usually a good place to look for a goose.

I don't know how many you are hosting but you may well need more than one goose there is not much meat on them.
We found goose fat made great Yorkshire Puddings.

Stollen from Aldi, that's my essential right now.

Twice the size and a few bucks cheaper than at World Market too. $4.99 in Aldi compared to $6.99 in World Market, and double the size!

I had a time trying to make a very young sales assistant at TJMaxx understand that I wanted British Christmas crackers, not the savoury biscuits. She finally had to go get the manager, who immediately said, "Oh those Christmas poppers! I just have a few left in the back."

Anyway, thanks for the tip, Nutmegger. They're never easy to find in our area!

My family love them!--it would not be Christmas at ALL without them. My problem is that I usually have such a motley collection of one or two of each variety left-over from previous Christmases that each person has a different sized & shaped one. But this time I got a big box of 10, so we will all actually match this year.

Mrs L; "Is there anything I don't do for Christmas that you miss"

Me; thinking of this thread and how much fun the grand kids would have with paper hats etc "Christmas Crackers"

Mrs L; "Do you know how much they cost. I'm not paying that so people can sit with stupid paper hats on their heads"

Use goose fat for proper roasted spuds too.
You can keep the goose, I've never understood why people rave about it, there's a good reason two legged meats are called fowl...

Does anyone leave a mince pie/carrot and a glass of sherry for Rudolf? I don't like sherry so I usually buy some drambuie and sub it. Don't tell the kids....

We've found recently that Father Christmas likes to have a glass of either Wine or Gin and Tonic to perk him up when visiting alongside his mince pie, and reindeer's seem to have a very small appetite so a single carrot and a small glass of mil suffices.

$450CAD
Are you a professional footballer?

So you do have breakfast sometimes then.