Brand’s Popular Antiquities written in 1777 says:
On Christmas Eve, it was customary customary with young people in the North of England to dive for apples, or catch at them, when stuck upon one end of a kind of hanging beam, at the other extremity of which is fixed a lighted candle, and that with their mouths only, their hands being tied behind their backs. Nuts and apples chiefly compose the entertainment, and from the custom of flinging the former into the fire, or cracking them with their teeth, it has doubtless had its vulgar name of Nutcrack Night. In Goldsmith’s time, the country folks religiously observed this nutcracking festival, as he tells us in his ” Vicar of Wakefield.” Stafford says, they (certain deluded men) ” make me call to mind an old Christmas gambole, contrived with a thred which being fastened to some beame, hath at the nether end of it a sticke, at the one end of which is tied a candle, and at the other end an apple; so that when a man comes to bite at the apple, the candle burnes his nose. The catching at the apple and candle may be called playing at something like the ancient English game of the quintain, which is now almost totally forgotten. Hutchinson, somewhat fancifully perhaps, identified this Christian usage with the rites anciently observed in honour of Pomona [the Roman goddess of trees and fruits].