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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The company's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammalian play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

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

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

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the brain when we hear a joke?

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it transpires.

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

The research entails imaging the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both planning and starting motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the identical phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found at a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the perfect gag?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 people around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he says the more effective.

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"It creates a shared experience around the table and I think it's lovely."