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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 warehouse in the capital.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder grins, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she says.

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up joke in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that unites the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these interactions can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is truly happening within the mind when we hear a gag?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Put these elements as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that support the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It indicates we are not just responding to humorous words, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found at a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh harder when you know others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research project for the world's most humorous gag.

Over tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker joke must be brief, he explains.

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

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

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

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

"That's a shared experience around the table and I believe it's wonderful."