🔗 Share this article

"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

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

The firm's founder smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with elders, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the joke to be something that unites the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with people around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian play vocalisation," explains a professor.

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

Scientists have found that a lack of such interactions can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural areas involved in both planning and starting motion and those linked to sight and recall.

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

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the mind than the same word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

It means people are not just responding to humorous words, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

"You laugh more when you know others," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the positive effect is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the planet's most humorous gag.

Over tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker joke must be brief, he says.

"But they also need to be bad gags, puns that cause us to groan," 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.

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

"That's a common moment at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."