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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.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

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

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian play sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced levels of endorphin release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually happening inside the mind when we listen to a gag?

An awful lot occurs in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails imaging the minds of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a really interesting pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex set of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It indicates we are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that follows them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found around a Christmas table?

"You laugh harder when you know others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good factor is more likely to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

Likely not, but that has not stopped experts from trying to.

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

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by 350,000 people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"They must also be bad jokes, jokes that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

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

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

"It creates a common experience at the gathering and I think it's wonderful."