🔗 Share this article

"How much did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This quip is greeted with groans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

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

The company's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

The key to a great 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 laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such interactions can significantly harm mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to humour, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which indicates which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and starting movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Put all of this together, and people listening to a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the mind than the identical phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a smile or a laugh," she says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found around a holiday table?

"People 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 jokes, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific search for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

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

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

The more "terrible" the gag, he states the more effective.

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

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person find them humorous.

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