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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This quip is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The firm's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of endorphin release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is actually happening within the brain when we listen to a gag?

An awful lot happens in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

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

The research entails imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a really interesting pattern of neural activity," says the professor.

A gag activates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also neural areas involved in both planning and initiating motion and those involved in sight and memory.

Put these elements together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a Christmas table?

"People laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

"The laughter is key. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the perfect gag?

Likely not, but that has not prevented researchers from trying to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a research search for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

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

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person considers them funny.

"That's a shared experience at the table and I think it's lovely."