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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 resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The company's founder smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the communal laughter of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have found 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 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

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

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually happening within the brain when we listen to a gag?

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it turns out.

Using 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 areas that receive more blood.

Testing involves scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural areas associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

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

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It means we are not just reacting to humorous words, they are responding to the amusement that follows them.

Amusement, says the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found at a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh more when you know others," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the planet's most humorous joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a clearer idea than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

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

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the more effective.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"That's a common moment around the table and I believe it's wonderful."