What Do Holiday Cracker Puns Do to Our Minds?

"How much did Santa's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This joke is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, almost apologetically at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

The secret to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

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

The Science Of Shared Laughter

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

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people around the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a really ancient mammal social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these interactions can significantly damage both psychological and bodily health.

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the mind when we hear a joke?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Put all of this together, and individuals listening to a pun have a complex set of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

It indicates people are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that follows them.

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found around a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with others," she says, "and laughter increases more when you like them or care for them."

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

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker pun must be short, he says.

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

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

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

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us find them humorous.

"It creates a common moment at the gathering and I think it's lovely."