🔗 Share this article

"What was the price did Santa's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This joke is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The key to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian play vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

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

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the identical word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more likely to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research search for the world's funniest joke.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he says.

"They must also be poor jokes, puns that make us groan," he continues.

The more "awful" the gag, he states the better.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

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