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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh 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 meeting with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a truly ancient mammal social sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly damage mental and physical health.

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

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you love."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

But what is actually happening inside the brain when we listen to a joke?

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

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

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine all of this together, and individuals listening to a pun have a complex series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a laugh," she explains.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard around a holiday table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a research project for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

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

"But they also need to be poor gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person considers them funny.

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