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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 warehouse in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume 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 gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

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

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a truly ancient mammal play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these interactions can seriously harm mental and physical well-being.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she continues.

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

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the mind when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

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

The research involves imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a complex set of neural responses that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the same word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," she explains.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found at a Christmas gathering?

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

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be caused not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the world's most humorous joke.

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

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

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

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common experience at the table and I believe it's lovely."