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

This quip is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

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

The firm's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the communal laughter of the holiday meal with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people around the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," explains a professor.

Communal laughter, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood flow.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals listening to a joke have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found around a Christmas gathering?

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

Likely not, but that has not prevented experts from attempting to.

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific search for the world's most humorous joke.

Over tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

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

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

The more "terrible" the gag, he says the better.

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"It creates a shared moment around the table and I think it's wonderful."