🔗 Share this article

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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The company's founder smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Laughter

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

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammalian play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of such interactions can seriously damage mental and physical health.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is actually happening inside the mind when we hear a gag?

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

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

Testing involves scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection 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," says the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both planning and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of neural responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

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

It means we are not just reacting to humorous words, they are reacting to the amusement that follows them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard around a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the world's funniest joke.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also be poor gags, puns that make us moan," he adds.

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker puns is that not one person considers them funny.

"It creates a common moment around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."