🔗 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 resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin release," she continues.

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

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you love."

What Happens In the Brain?

But what is actually taking place within the mind when we hear a gag?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a very interesting pattern of neural activity," says the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also neural regions associated with both planning and initiating motion and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of neural responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific project for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be bad jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

"That's a shared experience at the table and I think it's wonderful."