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

This joke is met by groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

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

The company's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

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

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to experience communal amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammalian social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps make and maintain social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin release," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

What Happens In the Brain?

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

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

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

Testing entails scanning the minds of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a really interesting pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

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

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research project for the world's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 jokes later, with scores provided by 350,000 participants globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker pun needs to be brief, he explains.

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

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

"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 none of us find them funny.

"It creates a common experience around the table and I think it's lovely."