Tradition of Christmas Crackers

I love Christmas crackers. I was trying to explain the concept to my Chinese roommate because they are so wicked fun! For those who don't know Christmas crackers are not food, the best way to describe them is basically that they're cardboard tubes wrapped up like presents with wrapping paper that two people pull apart and there are prizes inside. They always seem to have paper hats in many colors, really bad jokes, small toys like (really annoying) whistles and other stuff too. They've kind of become a family tradition. So it's official I'm crackers for Christmas crackers!

Photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas_cracker#mediaviewer/File:ChristmasCrackers_2.jpg