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

This quip is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

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

The firm's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

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

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Brain?

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

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

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

"During the study we observed a really interesting pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

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

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

It indicates people are not just reacting to funny jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a research search for the planet's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 jokes later, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"They must also need to be bad gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he says the better.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them funny.

"That's a shared moment around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."