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"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This quip is greeted with groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

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

The firm's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

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

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

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

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to experience shared amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people around the Christmas table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which shows which areas of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

Testing entails imaging the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding language, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and starting movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," she explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found around a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun must be short, he says.

"But they also be poor jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

"That's a common experience around the table and I believe it's lovely."