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

This joke is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder says.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play vocalisation," explains a professor.

Communal amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of these interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that receive more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements together, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

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

"This activation occurred in areas 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 reacting to funny jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Amusement, says the expert, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she says, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a research search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker joke needs to be short, he says.

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us moan," he adds.

The more "awful" the joke, he states the better.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"That's a shared moment at the table and I think it's lovely."