How Do Festive Cracker Jokes Affect Our Minds?

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

This quip is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy communal laughter is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of such social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin release," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly taking place inside the brain when we hear a joke?

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it transpires.

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

Testing entails imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a very interesting activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those involved in sight and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a complex set of brain responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found at a Christmas table?

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

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

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

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be brief, he explains.

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

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

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"It creates a shared moment at the table and I think it's lovely."