How Do Holiday Cracker Gags Do to Our Minds?

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

This one-liner is met by moans that echo through a storage facility in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that makes supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the same as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and possibly friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Behind Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social connections between individuals.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can significantly damage mental and physical well-being.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin release," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Happens Inside the Brain?

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

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

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

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

"During the study we got a very fascinating pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural areas involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine these elements together, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex set of neural responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

Likely not, but that has not prevented experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a professor set up a scientific search for the world's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us groan," he adds.

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

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

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

"That's a shared experience at the table and I think it's wonderful."