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All over Britain on Christmas Day, families can be found sitting around
their dining tables enjoying a traditional lunch of roast turkey with all the
trimmings - and all, regardless of age, wearing coloured paper hats. It is
rumoured that even the Queen wears her paper hat over lunch!
圣诞节当天，全英国的家庭都会坐在餐桌前，吃一顿传统的圣诞大餐，塞满了各种馅料的烤火鸡。无论年龄老幼，所有人都会在头上戴一顶彩色纸做成的纸帽子。据说，就连伊莉莎白女王也会戴纸帽子哦!
So why this quaint tradition? Where do these paper hats come from? The
answer is the Christmas Cracker。
那为什么会有这个古怪的传统呢?戴纸帽子的传统来源于哪里?答案就在另一项圣诞传统活动——圣诞拉炮!
A Christmas Cracker is a cardboard paper tube, wrapped in brightly coloured
paper and twisted at both ends. There is a banger inside the cracker, two strips
of chemically impregnated paper that react with friction so that when the
cracker is pulled apart by two people, the cracker makes a bang。
圣诞拉炮是用硬纸板做的纸筒，再用色彩鲜艳的彩纸包裹在外面，两端拧紧。在拉炮里会有一个爆竹，当两个人拉动拉炮两端时，拉炮里的两条浸渍纸就会发生摩擦，发出“嘣”的响声。
Inside the cracker there is a paper crown made from tissue paper, a motto
or joke on a slip of paper and a little gift。
拉炮里会装有纸做的皇冠、写在纸上的名言或笑话，还会有一些小礼物。
Christmas crackers are a British tradition dating back toVictorian times
when in the early 1850s, London confectioner TomSmith started adding a motto to
his sugared almond bon-bons whichhe sold wrapped in a twisted paper package。
圣诞拉炮成为英国传统的历史可以追溯到维多利亚时期，约在19世纪50年代早期，伦敦的一个糖果商汤姆•史密斯把写有名言的纸片放在了他售卖的糖果包装里，包装方式就是在糖果外用纸将两头拧紧。
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The paper hat was added to the cracker in the early 1900s. Thecracker was
soon adopted as a traditional festive custom and today virtually every household
has at least one box of crackers to pullover Christmas。
到了20世纪初，纸帽子也被放到了圣诞拉炮里。很快，拉炮就成了英国人过圣诞节的传统习俗。现在，所有的英国家庭至少都会准备一盒拉炮留到圣诞节时来拉响。
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发表于 2016-7-10 18:37:00