🔗 Share this article

"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Zero, 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 produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

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

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

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

"You want the joke to be something that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Laughter

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

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people at the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a really primordial mammal social vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Scientists have found that a lack of these social exchanges can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased levels of endorphin release," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

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

What Occurs In the Mind?

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

An awful lot occurs in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

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

Testing involves imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a complex set of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the identical word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

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

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found around a Christmas gathering?

"People laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate gag?

Likely not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific search for the world's funniest gag.

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

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

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us moan," he adds.

The more "terrible" the joke, he says the better.

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

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

"That's a shared experience at the table and I think it's lovely."