🔗 Share this article

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

This quip is greeted with moans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The firm's founder grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be something that brings the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammalian social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have found that a absence of such social exchanges can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of endorphin release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly terrible festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

What Happens In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we listen to a joke?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that receive more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also neural regions involved in both planning and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and people hearing a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the same phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would use to move your face into a smile or a laugh," she explains.

It indicates people are not just reacting to funny words, they are reacting to the amusement that follows them.

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she says, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the terrible Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the planet's most humorous gag.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke needs to be brief, he explains.

"They must also be poor gags, jokes that make us groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

"It creates a shared moment at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."