The Impact of Holiday Cracker Puns Do to The Brain?

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

This joke is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. 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," the founder explains.

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, children and potentially friends.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Laughter

Coming together to enjoy 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 Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

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

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

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

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually doing a lot of the really important work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

Which Happens Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the brain when we hear a gag?

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

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

Testing involves imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," says the professor.

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

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a complex series of neural responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the same word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a laugh," she says.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found at a holiday gathering?

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

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

"The laughter is key. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

Years ago, a psychologist set up a research project for the world's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also need to be bad jokes, jokes that make us groan," he continues.

The more "terrible" the joke, he says the better.

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us considers them humorous.

"It creates a shared moment around the table and I think it's wonderful."