Those pullers of crackers this Christmas who read the mottoes and survived without permanent psychological damage had best put them in the attic. One day they could be rare ephemera. At least one major British manufacturer of crackers is considering bracing itself trendily against competitive times by introducing horoscopes instead.
“I would not have thought that mottoes help sales today,” said Mr Peter Stallard, export manager of Tom Smith and Company, whose proud boast, as amiably corny as any Christmas cracker motto, is that if their yearly cracker production were laid end-to-end, it would take a supersonic aircraft just under six hours to fly from one end of it to the other.
“If I had to put my finger on what I am looking for for export, I would personally change mottoes for horoscopes,” said Mr Stallard. “They would possibly go over well in this country too, because people read their horoscopes every day. They don’t take any notice of them, but they read them.”
The fact is that if it is not horoscopes, it may be something else. The Christmas cracker motto is under increasing pressure: economic (Tom Smith were 4 per cent down on their sales target this year): differences of taste (“Who’s there ?” “Hugh.” “Hugh Who?” “Hugh were you out with last night?” etc, has now been largely overtaken by compulsory education) and now also racial and religious pressures (references to Christmas itself may alienate Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists and Jews and, for that matter, humanists as well.)
The Tom Smith company at Norwich has a vetting committee, consisting of the managing director, the head of the design department, and the sales managers. The committee looks at ideas put up by the printers; members put up a few of their own and eliminate a few, such as the one that went: “What do you get when you cross a mouse with an elephant?” - “A big hole in the skirting board.”
The work of the committee, which meets shortly to consider ideas for Christmas 1977, grows steadily more difficult. A motto such as “The suspicious parent makes an artful child” may seem harmless enough, but the committee would be unlikely to sanction it for future use.
“We wouldn’t use moralising mottoes,” said Mr Eric Vernon. “If you use something which is moral you upset someone else’s morals. It’s true. You can find an idea that five or six people find harmless, and someone else will say ‘That’s a bit risky.’ You don’t for instance, know the age of the people who are going to pull the cracker.
“A degree of corniness is more or less deliberate,” said Mr Vernon. “We have different series, we have corny ones, though not perhaps as corny as they were years ago. But I would have to say that most of the things that entertain people are corny. It is these jokes they talk about more than other jokes. People like a cornier humour than they will let on.”
The very fact that some companies use the same mottoes year after year - a circumstance which could be taken as an indication of stability - is in some cases rather an indication of how difficult the whole motto business is becoming.
“Having got 280 mottoes no one complains about, next year we will be sticking with them,” said Mr Geoffrey Rich, managing director of the Napier Novelty Company. Recently the firm introduced a new joke and promptly rued it. The joke was: “What is arrested motion?” - “A 40-year-old woman.”
Mr Rich thought that jest harmless. “But we got letters from women’s institutes all over the country. They thought it in extremely bad taste.”
Now the Equal Opportunities Commission would presumably insist the punch-line read: “A 40-year-old person.” The difficulties faced by those who try to hold fast to the institution of the motto will increase still further.
There is only one visible thread of contemporary thinking - social equality - that continues to resist the pressure against the little paper slip inside the cracker. “At least in our socialist society,” said Mr Rich, “there is one thing shared by stockbroker and dustman, and that is the same motto.”
