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

This one-liner is greeted with groans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The company's founder smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that unites the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with people around the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can seriously harm mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

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

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot occurs in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

The research entails scanning the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a database of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of brain responses that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

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

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

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

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

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

"It's the laughter. The joke is the terrible Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research search for the planet's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

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

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common experience at the gathering and I think it's wonderful."