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

This quip is met by moans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The secret to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, scientists say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is actually happening inside the mind when we hear a joke?

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

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

Testing involves imaging the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain regions involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It means we are not just responding to funny jokes, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a scientific search for the world's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 jokes later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

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

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

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

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"It creates a common moment around the table and I believe it's lovely."