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

This quip is greeted with moans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good gag in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to experience communal amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical health.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

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

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we hear a gag?

A tremendous amount occurs in response to comedy, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Put all of this together, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh more when you know others," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific project for the world's most humorous gag.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be brief, he explains.

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us moan," he continues.

The more "terrible" the gag, he says the more effective.

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us find them funny.

"That's a shared moment around the table and I think it's wonderful."