🔗 Share this article

"How much did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This joke is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of such interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a really interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and starting movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of neural responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a smile or a laugh," she says.

It means we are not just responding to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a holiday gathering?

"People laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific search for the world's most humorous gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker joke must be short, he says.

"They must also need to be poor jokes, jokes that make us moan," he adds.

The more "terrible" the joke, he says the more effective.

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"It creates a shared moment around the table and I believe it's wonderful."