🔗 Share this article

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

This joke is greeted with moans that echo through a warehouse in London.

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

The firm's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder says.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have found that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine these elements together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is combined with chuckles 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 employ to move your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you know others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research project for the world's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

"They must also need to be poor jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"It creates a common moment around the table and I think it's lovely."