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

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

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

The company's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Behind Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian social sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research involves imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of brain responses that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain 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 smile or a laugh," she says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a holiday gathering?

"You laugh harder 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 gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific search for the planet's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with ratings provided by 350,000 people around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he explains.

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

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common moment around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."