Making Christmas Crackers (1910)

Director:

Cast: A. E. Coleby

Synopsis: Factory workers make Christmas crackers, a process that is shown in detail. Later, a family gathers around the tree at Christmas and enjoys their noise-making toys. Finally, Santa Claus emerges from a gigantic cracker.

Brought to us courtesy of Messrs Clark, Nicholls & Coombs of London, this informative little movie provides us with an insight into the astounding amount of labour that was required to produce a box of Christmas crackers back in 1910. Making Christmas Crackers shows the incredible amount of work involved, with close to a dozen different stages in the production processes, for what seems like such a simple product. Naturally, every stage requires an incredible amount of repetitive, mind-numbing work that would drive most people close to the edge of insanity today, but which was pretty much standard for the working classes of yesteryear.

The film has something of the feel of a promotional film for the manufacturers involved as the final scene has a happy middle-class family prancing around a huge Christmas tree before the children pull an oversize cracker in which Father Christmas is hiding. But it leaves a strangely sour taste in the mouth when you consider all those hours of grinding labour undergone for the sake of a few seconds pleasure.

(Reviewed 23rd March 2012)