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

This quip is greeted with moans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The firm's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she says.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Behind Shared Laughter

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

It means people are not just reacting to funny words, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found around a Christmas table?

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

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a professor established a research project for the world's most humorous joke.

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be short, he says.

"But they also be bad jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the joke, he says the better.

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person find them funny.

"It creates a common moment at the table and I think it's lovely."