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

This quip is greeted with groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's founder grins, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually happening within the brain when we listen to a gag?

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

Using brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

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

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would use to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates people are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found around a holiday table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and laughter increases more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research project for the planet's funniest joke.

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

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

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he says the better.

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person considers them humorous.

"That's a shared moment at the table and I think it's lovely."