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

This one-liner is met by groans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a company that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

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

"You measure the joke by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

The research entails imaging the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals listening to a joke have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

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

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," she explains.

It means 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 mean for the laughter heard at a holiday gathering?

"People laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more probable to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

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

"They must also be poor gags, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

"It creates a common moment at the table and I think it's wonderful."