🔗 Share this article

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

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

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

The company's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a really ancient mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a lack of these interactions can significantly harm mental and physical health.

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

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

But what is actually happening within the brain when we listen to a gag?

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the minds of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals listening to a joke have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard around a holiday table?

"You laugh harder when you know others," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or love 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.

"The laughter is key. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

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

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

The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be brief, he says.

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

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person find them humorous.

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