The Impact of Festive Cracker Gags Do to The Brain?

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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker pun is not the same as a good joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

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

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with people around the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Communal amusement, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

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

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," she adds.

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

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

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

An awful lot occurs in response to comedy, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the minds of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A joke activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both planning and initiating movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated series of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is paired with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would employ to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates we are not just reacting to humorous words, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a scientific project for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be brief, he says.

"But they also be bad gags, jokes that cause us to moan," he adds.

The increasingly "terrible" the joke, he states the better.

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

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

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