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

This quip is met by groans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder grins, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a really ancient mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these interactions can seriously damage mental and physical health.

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Occurs In the Brain?

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

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which indicates which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

Testing involves imaging the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a really interesting activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex series of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied 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," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

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

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a scientific project for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke needs to be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be bad gags, puns that make us groan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

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