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

This one-liner is greeted with groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

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

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

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can significantly damage mental and physical health.

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

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we listen to a joke?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also brain regions involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Put all of this together, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard at a holiday gathering?

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

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a reason to laugh together."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he explains.

"But they also need to be poor gags, jokes that make us groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"That's a common experience at the gathering and I think it's lovely."