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

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

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces products for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

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

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

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

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

"So when you are chuckling with others at the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a really ancient mammal social vocalisation," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

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

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

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is actually happening inside the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood.

The research involves imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas associated with both planning and initiating motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Put all of this together, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates we are not just responding to funny jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard around a holiday table?

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

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

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research search for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also be poor jokes, puns that make us groan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the more effective.

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

"It creates a common experience around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."