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

This joke is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that makes products for social events. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The firm's owner grins, nearly apologetically 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 loudness of the groans at the table," she says.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"You want the joke to be something that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we hear a gag?

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to humour, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and starting motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

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

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the positive effect is more likely to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the dreadful holiday cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect gag?

Probably not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a professor set up a research project for the world's funniest gag.

Over tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants globally, he has a clearer idea than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke must be short, he explains.

"But they also be bad gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a shared moment around the gathering and I believe it's lovely."