🔗 Share this article

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

This quip is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a company that produces products for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The company's founder smiles, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and possibly friends.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammalian social sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Occurs In the Brain?

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

A tremendous amount happens in response to humour, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which shows which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to chart the areas that get more blood.

The research involves imaging the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a very fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also brain areas involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people hearing a joke have a complex series of neural responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

It indicates we are not just responding to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you know others," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a research project for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also need to be bad gags, puns that make us groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"It creates a common moment around the gathering and I believe it's lovely."