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

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

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

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

"You measure the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table 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 states.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

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

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place inside the mind when we listen to a gag?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction 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 map the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really interesting pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of neural responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found at a Christmas gathering?

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more likely to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a scientific project for the world's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

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

"But they also be bad jokes, jokes that make us moan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the better.

"The reason is that 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 experience around the table and I think it's lovely."