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

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

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence 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 amounts of endorphin release," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

Which Happens In the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the brain when we hear a gag?

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

Testing involves imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and understanding speech, but also brain regions associated with both planning and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a complex set of neural responses that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a laugh," she says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard at a holiday table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

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

"The laughter is key. The joke is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped experts from trying to.

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

More than 40,000 gags later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a clearer idea than most as to what works and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun must be brief, he says.

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

The more "awful" the gag, he says the more effective.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

"That's a common moment at the table and I think it's lovely."