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

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

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The company's founder grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and potentially neighbours.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Happens In the Brain?

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

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a really interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of brain responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It means people are not just responding to humorous words, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard at a Christmas gathering?

"People laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more likely to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The joke is the terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a research search for the world's most humorous gag.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be bad gags, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"That's a shared experience at the gathering and I think it's lovely."