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

This quip is greeted with groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing session with a company that makes products for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The company's founder smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

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

"You want the gag to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

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

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a very fascinating pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and initiating movement and those involved in sight and memory.

Put all of this together, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous word is combined with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates people are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you are familiar with others," she says, "and laughter increases more when you like them or care for them."

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

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

Likely not, but that has not prevented researchers from attempting to.

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific project for the planet's most humorous joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also need to be poor gags, jokes that make us groan," he continues.

The more "awful" the joke, he says the more effective.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

"It creates a shared moment at the table and I think it's wonderful."