🔗 Share this article

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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that makes products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke 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 around the table," she explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and potentially friends.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Laughter

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

"So when you are chuckling with others around the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between individuals.

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

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

What Happens In the Brain?

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

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it turns out.

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

The research involves imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for auditory processing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and starting movement and those involved in sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and people hearing a pun have a complex series of brain reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," she explains.

It indicates we are not just reacting to funny words, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research project for the world's most humorous gag.

Over tens of thousands of gags later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker pun needs to be brief, he says.

"They must also be bad gags, puns that cause us to moan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the more effective.

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

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

"That's a shared moment at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."