What Do Christmas Cracker Puns Influence Our Minds?

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

This joke is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a company that produces products for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can significantly damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

Which Happens In the Mind?

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

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

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

Testing entails imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural areas associated with both preparation and starting motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of brain responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard at a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific project for the planet's funniest joke.

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker pun needs to be short, he says.

"But they also need to be poor gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

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