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

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

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

The firm's owner smiles, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with others around the Christmas table you are dropping into what's very likely a truly primordial mammal play sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical well-being.

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

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

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

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

"During the study we got a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," says the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural regions involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

It means we are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found at a holiday gathering?

"You laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

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

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

Probably not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also need to be poor jokes, puns that make us moan," he adds.

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

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

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

"That's a shared moment at the table and I believe it's lovely."