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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she explains.

The secret to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared amusement of the Christmas meal with elders, kids and potentially neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

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

"So when you are chuckling with people around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can significantly damage mental and physical well-being.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of endorphin release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun 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 the people you care about."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place inside the brain when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount occurs in response to humour, it transpires.

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

The research involves scanning the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a very interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the same word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh harder when you know people," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a scientific search for the planet's most humorous gag.

Over 40,000 gags later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker joke must be short, he explains.

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

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he says the better.

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that not one person find them funny.

"It creates a common experience at the table and I think it's wonderful."