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

This quip is greeted with moans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

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

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

Shared laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of such social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we hear a gag?

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people listening to a pun have a complex set of brain reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous word is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the identical word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

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

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard around a holiday gathering?

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

When it comes to Christmas 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 terrible Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh together."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a research project for the world's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker joke must be short, he says.

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

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

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person considers them funny.

"That's a shared experience around the gathering and I think it's lovely."