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"How much 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.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that makes products for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

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

The key to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Laughter

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

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal social sound," explains a professor.

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

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

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly vital task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we listen to a gag?

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

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

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

A gag activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas involved in both planning and initiating movement and those involved in sight and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of neural responses that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

It indicates people are not just responding to funny words, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found at a Christmas table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

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

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person find them funny.

"That's a shared experience around the table and I believe it's lovely."