🔗 Share this article

"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This quip is met by groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

Gathering to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

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

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

An awful lot happens in response to humour, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing involves imaging the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put all of this together, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you know others," she says, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a professor established a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker pun must be short, he says.

"They must also need to be poor gags, puns that make us groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

"It creates a common moment around the gathering and I believe it's lovely."