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

This joke is greeted with groans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Laughter

Coming together to experience shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with people around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian social vocalisation," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

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

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased levels of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the mind when we hear a joke?

An awful lot happens in response to humour, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really interesting activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions associated with both planning and initiating movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex set of brain responses that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," she says.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a holiday table?

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

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

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke needs to be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be poor gags, puns that cause us to moan," he adds.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he states the better.

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

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