How Do Festive Cracker Gags Do to Our Minds?

"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, almost apologetically at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Laughter

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play sound," explains a professor.

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

Scientists have found that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm mental and physical health.

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

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

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

A tremendous amount happens in response to comedy, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing entails imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

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

Put these elements as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

It indicates people are not just responding to funny jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

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

"But they also need to be poor gags, puns that make us groan," he adds.

The more "awful" the joke, he states the better.

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person find them funny.

"That's a shared experience at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."