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

This joke is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The company's founder grins, almost apologetically at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

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

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the Christmas meal with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

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

"So when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Scientists have found that a lack of such interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," she continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Happens In the Brain?

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

A tremendous amount happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research involves scanning the minds of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both preparation and starting motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles 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 grin or a chuckle," she says.

It means we are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard at a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of 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 joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

Probably not, but that has not prevented researchers from attempting to.

In 2001, a psychologist established a research search for the planet's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 gags later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a clearer idea than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also need to be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

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

"It creates a shared experience at the table and I think it's wonderful."