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"How much did Santa's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

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

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

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

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a really ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a absence of such social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced amounts of endorphin release," she continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Happens In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we hear a gag?

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it turns out.

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

The research entails scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Put all of this together, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of brain responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a stronger response in the mind than the same word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found around a holiday table?

"You laugh more when you know people," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate gag?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

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

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

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

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

"That's a common moment at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."