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"What was the price did Santa's sleigh 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 joke-testing session with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker pun is not the same as a good joke per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, kids and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

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

Shared amusement, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these interactions can significantly damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the brain'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 truly awful festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we listen to a gag?

A tremendous amount happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

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

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also brain regions associated with both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive factor 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 terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a research search for the planet's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 gags later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be brief, he says.

"They must also need to be poor gags, puns that make us moan," he adds.

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person find them funny.

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