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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

The key to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have found that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a really interesting pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of neural responses that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your face into a smile or a laugh," she explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you know others," she says, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

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

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect joke?

Probably not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

In 2001, a psychologist set up a scientific project for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that make us groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common experience around the table and I think it's lovely."