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"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to experience shared amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammal social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

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

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important work of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

Which Happens In the Mind?

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

An awful lot occurs in reaction to humour, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which indicates which areas of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a very interesting pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding language, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of brain responses that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

It indicates people are not just reacting to funny words, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

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

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

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a research search for the planet's funniest joke.

Over 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker pun must be short, he explains.

"They must also be bad gags, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

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

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

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