🔗 Share this article

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

This joke is met by moans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only ancient, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good effect 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 reason to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research project for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

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

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

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"That's a shared experience around the gathering and I believe it's lovely."