🔗 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 warehouse in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that makes products for social events. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she says.

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the joke to be something that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal social sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin release," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we listen to a joke?

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research entails imaging the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex series of brain responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

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

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

It indicates we are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, says the expert, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific search for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer idea than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also need to be bad jokes, jokes that make us groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"That's a common moment around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."