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

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

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

The company's owner smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

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

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people around the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a really ancient mammalian social sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of such interactions can significantly harm mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of endorphin release," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a chuckle," she explains.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh more when you know people," she says, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the world's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

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

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

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the better.

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker puns is that not one person considers them funny.

"It creates a common moment at the table and I believe it's lovely."