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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. 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," she explains.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up joke per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas meal with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian play sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount happens in response to humour, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a database of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both planning and initiating motion and those involved in sight and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of brain reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

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

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more likely to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a scientific project for the world's most humorous joke.

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

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

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

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