The 21 best luxury Christmas crackers to take festivities to the next level

If you really want to go all out and skip the cheesy toys, you could go far worse than a Floris' eau de parfum cracker. Available in three exquisite 10ml scents (Honey Oud, Cherry Blossom, and Mulberry Fig), both you and your guests will smell absolutely fabulous during post-turkey charades.

It’s all very well laying out sparkling grown-up crackers with sensibly sophisticated designs, but if you’re sharing your table with little ones this year, then you can help spread a little more Christmas spirit with this set of Luxury Elves. Featuring a delightful mix of elves dressed to the nines in rather smart green and red uniforms, it’s packed with enough whimsical design to appeal to all ages, while retaining a sense of polished elegance at the same time.

We've all put a brave face on for Christmas before, so these Rockett St George crackers are here to help bring some levity to the occasion. Each is adorned with an old-timey portrait given a festive makeover and comes filled with a calibre of joke that can only be told with a gold paper crown adorned across your head. Better still, six similarly jovial gifts are included too.

It's not often that you'll turf a decent gift out of a Christmas cracker, so credit to Harvey Nichols for putting the effort in. Our favourite treat from this ‘Luxurious’ set? A delightfully embossed champagne stopper, ‘cos you can’t guzzle a magnum a day for the whole season. Or at least, you shouldn't…

What's Christmas without an endless supply of chocolate? Making sure your guests are in no short supply, Hotel Chocolat's “Rather Large” Christmas cracker is, in fact, as large as we've seen a Christmas cracker before, containing all of the contents you normally find in six crackers in one. More of a centrepiece than it is part of your place settings, it includes a total of 40 chocolates (including salted caramel, truffles and chocolate orange), 12 paper party hats and jokes inside. All that you need to decide is who gets to pull it.

Kids and grown-up Disney fans alike will love this fun set of crackers featuring everyone’s favourite anthropomorphic mouse couple. Rather than opting for bits of easily forgettable plastic, the gifts within are far more exciting — a selection of Mickey and Minnie-themed socks to slip into when you enter your evening couch coma pyjama era.

Did you know that a cracker can be for life, not just for Christmas? Not a regular cardboard one, mind. Rather, something beautifully hardy like this set of linen crackers, complete with satin ties and gorgeous embroidered Christmas icons guaranteed to add a touch of classy fun to any table. Pop your own gifts in each year, tie them up, and revel in your sustainable cleverness.

This set of traditional hand-made crackers is about as eco-friendly as things get, without a single trace of plastic to be found in their packaging, contents, or construction. The sophisticated dark green ivy design has a wonderfully decadent feel to it, while the biodegradable Tencel ribbon is a beautifully sustainable touch.

There’ll probably be plenty of tipple during your lunch on Christmas day, but you can never have enough liquid ambrosia when friends and/or low-key enemies are dining with you. Enter Vinca’s large boozy cracker, filled with one of each of its award-winning organic wines. They’re in cans too, which makes them wonderfully portable for the post-lunch dog walk.

What does an espresso martini, negroni, pina colada, and a margarita have in common? Why, they’re all found in MOTH’s set of devilishly tempting cocktail crackers. Available in packs of four with one cocktail in each, we’re sure there’ll be plenty of trading for people’s favourites. Though they all sound pretty great right about now.

Bright red cardboard and gaudy styles be damned. This set of deliciously dark midnight forest table crackers will pleasantly bombard your senses with a dark, sophisticated palette. Considered design aside, there’s also an origami frog leaping game inside each cracker for some post-lunch entertainment.

In this crackers-cum-party-game, Channel 4 show Taskmaster enters the Christmas dining room. You can probably guess what the contents are going to be here: two secret tasks per pull with one to be carried out during dinner and the second after all the Yorkshire puds have gone. Perfect for those with children young and old.

We keep thinking we're finished with our Christmas hosting purchases and then we're presented with things like this. A Christmas cracker by L'Occitane? With diminutive shower gel and hand cream duos in each!? Oh, go on then.

You know Habitat for its floor lamps and its settees. Now get ready for its Christmas crackers, which evoke the 1990s with their stark minimalism. Miniature gifts to be found in these little parcels include your traditional fodder — yo-yos, bottle openers, bookmarks — as well as some unique offerings: cookie cutters: egg cups and wooden skittles.

Paging the traditional households in the land. This is a PSA: you don't need to head to Harrods to look put together. Dunelm, too, has the kind of crackers that contribute to the mise-en-scène of a polished family dinner table. Here, you can get a perfectly civilised set of eight robin-decorated crackers with jokes, paper hats and fortunes for just six quid.

A little more than your Dunelms but still half the price of models by Selfridges and Hotel Chocolat, Cath Kidston's set of four crackers is perfect for an intimate gathering. Despite their mid-range pricing, they're probably the most detailed in design on our list, and still also come with a favour guests will actually use: hand creams.

Hallmark's Christmas crackers are as predictable as its movies. Paper hats, jokes, tiny gifts all included, then. But get this: entirely plastic-free favours are used for this six-pack. How's that for a twist?