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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh 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 produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The company's owner grins, almost apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The secret to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

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

The Science Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammal social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

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

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Brain?

But what is actually happening inside the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural areas involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," she says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard at a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you know people," she says, "and laughter increases further when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research project for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags later, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

"They must also be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he adds.

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

"This is because 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 considers them funny.

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