🔗 Share this article

"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that makes supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

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

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

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

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

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these interactions can significantly damage mental and physical health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in increased levels of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

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 truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is actually taking place within the brain when we hear a gag?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing involves imaging the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of brain responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a holiday table?

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

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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

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

More than 40,000 jokes later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also need to be bad jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he states the more effective.

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

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

"That's a common moment at the table and I believe it's wonderful."