🔗 Share this article

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

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she explains.

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and potentially neighbours.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Behind Shared Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of such social exchanges can significantly damage mental and physical well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the brain when we hear a joke?

An awful lot occurs in response to comedy, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

The research involves imaging the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions involved in both planning and initiating movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a chuckle," the professor says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found at a holiday table?

"You laugh harder when you know others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

"The laughter is key. The joke is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

Probably not, but that has not prevented researchers from trying to.

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific project for the planet's funniest joke.

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also be bad jokes, jokes that make us moan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person considers them funny.

"It creates a common experience at the table and I think it's lovely."