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

This joke is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a company that produces products for social events. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The firm's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke 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 Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that unites the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with others at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a really ancient mammalian play vocalisation," says a professor.

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

Researchers have found that a lack of such social exchanges can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of endorphin release," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot happens in response to humour, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a complex series of brain responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the same phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard around a Christmas table?

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific search for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a better 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 bad gags, puns that make us groan," he continues.

The more "awful" the joke, he states the more effective.

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that not one person find them humorous.

"That's a shared experience around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."