🔗 Share this article

"How much did Father Christmas's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This one-liner is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people around the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal social sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a lack of these interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin release," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

But what is truly happening within the mind when we listen to a gag?

A tremendous amount occurs in response to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

The research entails scanning the minds of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you know others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

Likely not, but that has not prevented experts from trying to.

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

Over tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us find them funny.

"That's a shared moment around the table and I believe it's wonderful."