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

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

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only ancient, scientists say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a truly ancient mammal social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

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

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of endorphin release," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Mind?

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

An awful lot occurs in response to comedy, it transpires.

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

The research entails imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a very fascinating pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

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

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your face into a smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found around a holiday gathering?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke needs to be brief, he says.

"They must also be bad gags, jokes that make us moan," he adds.

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

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

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

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