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"What was the price did Santa's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's founder smiles, almost apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of such social exchanges can seriously damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

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

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually happening inside the brain 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 neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and initiating motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine these elements together, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a stronger response in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

It means people are not just reacting to funny jokes, they are responding to the amusement that follows them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you know others," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

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

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the perfect gag?

Probably not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

In 2001, a professor set up a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also be bad jokes, puns that make us moan," he adds.

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

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

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"That's a common moment at the table and I think it's wonderful."