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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

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

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder says.

The key to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the communal laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people around the Christmas table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such interactions can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin release," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Happens In the Mind?

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

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

The research entails 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 chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a really interesting pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also neural areas involved in both preparation and starting movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of brain reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive effect 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 pun, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a research search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with ratings lodged by 350,000 participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be brief, he says.

"But they also be poor gags, puns that make us groan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he says the more effective.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

"It creates a shared experience around the table and I think it's lovely."