The Christmas tradition of opening crackers at the dinner table is always an amusingly silly, but communal experience. Everyone gets to groan at the terrible jokes, jump at the surprisingly loud snap, wear their colourful paper hat and occasionally even find something useful inside it too. Or maybe just a plastic ‘jumping’ frog.

As communal an experience as crackers are, once they’re opened they’re largely forgotten, and often the plastic tat they contain is disposed of with so much other accumulated Christmas junk.

So when we heard of Crackers of Glory, a snap free, plastic free and reusable set of tabletop mini games, we jumped at the chance to try them out.

In each Crackers of Glory box, you’ll find 8 crackers and rule sheets which serve multiple purposes; you can also keep score with them, as well as use them in the game’s finale.

The crackers are dished out as normal, and alongside hats and a storage bag, you’ll find six different mini games, each with its own rules. Participants each play their game, noting the outcome and their score on their sheet as they go.

The games are tiny versions of sports; archery and snooker, for example, given a tabletop twist with rubber bands or flicking, using components you’ll already have on the table such as cutlery to create the snooker table for that specific game.

Once you’ve all finished playing your games and recorded your victories, you get to fold your rules/score sheet into a paper plane for the final event: the Javelin Throw.

The outcome of this event determines who gets to wear the gold, silver or bronze hats, or indeed the red hat of participation for the really rubbish javelin throwers.

It’s a clever concept that’s amazingly good fun, and it’s completely plastic free. Each game is a pleasingly tactile experience and it definitely lends itself to the slightly hazy, family atmosphere that you inevitably have post-dinner at Christmas, with relatives you might not see all that much.

It’s a great way of bringing everyone together, with an experience that adds a light layer of competition and interaction to your get-together, that won’t confuse your granny or bore your younger relatives either. Plus, it’s reusable too, for the most part, though you might need to provide replacement paper for creating more javelins!

You can buy Crackers of Glory from Amazon.

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