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

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

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

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

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

The key to a good holiday cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists 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 really ancient mammalian play sound," explains a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of such social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is actually happening inside the mind when we listen to a gag?

A tremendous amount happens in response to humour, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and people hearing a pun have a complex set of neural responses that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

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

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found at a holiday gathering?

"You laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a scientific search for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also be bad gags, puns that cause us to moan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

"It creates a shared experience around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."