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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the joke to be something that brings the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only ancient, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian social sound," explains a professor.

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

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can seriously damage mental and physical health.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

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 terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we hear a gag?

An awful lot happens in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research entails imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and starting movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a complex set of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your face into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard around a holiday gathering?

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

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

"The laughter is key. The joke is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a reason to laugh together."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also need to be poor jokes, puns that make us groan," he continues.

The more "awful" the joke, he states the better.

"The reason is that 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 funny.

"That's a shared experience at the table and I believe it's wonderful."