How Do Festive Cracker Gags Affect Our Minds?

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

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

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that makes products for social events. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

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

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

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin release," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails imaging the minds of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a complex series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," she says.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

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

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

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a reason to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

Probably not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a professor established a scientific project for the world's funniest joke.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker joke must be short, he explains.

"But they also be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

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

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

"That's a common experience around the gathering and I think it's lovely."