🔗 Share this article

"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This quip is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is actually happening within the mind when we hear a joke?

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

Using brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

The research involves imaging the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a database of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and initiating movement and those involved in sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of neural responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates we are not just responding to humorous words, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found around a Christmas gathering?

"People laugh more when you know others," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

Probably not, but that has not prevented experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist set up a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

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

The ideal Christmas cracker joke needs to be short, he says.

"They must also be bad jokes, jokes that make us moan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the better.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them funny.

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