How Do Christmas Cracker Jokes Influence Our Brains?

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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

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

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

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

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of such social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you love."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and interpreting language, but also neural regions associated with both planning and initiating movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a laugh," she says.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

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

"You laugh harder when you know people," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

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

"It's the laughter. The gag is the terrible holiday cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a scientific search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker pun must be brief, he says.

"They must also be bad gags, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The more "terrible" the gag, he states the more effective.

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

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

"It creates a common experience at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."