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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This quip is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

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

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

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Happens In the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the mind when we hear a gag?

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

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated series of brain responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is paired 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 use to contort your face into a smile or a chuckle," she explains.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you know people," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good factor is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

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

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

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

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

"They must also need to be poor gags, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

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

"It creates a shared experience at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."