What Do Holiday Cracker Puns Influence Our Minds?

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

This quip is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes products for social events. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian social sound," explains a professor.

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

Scientists have found that a lack of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Happens In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place inside the mind when we hear a joke?

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it turns out.

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

Testing involves imaging the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a database of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in sight and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of brain reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is combined with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she says, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

Probably not, but that has not prevented researchers from trying to.

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags later, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us moan," he continues.

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

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

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

"It creates a shared experience around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."