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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

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

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be something that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital task of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we listen to a joke?

A tremendous amount happens in response to humour, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which indicates which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

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

Put these elements as a whole, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the identical phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

It means people are not just responding to humorous words, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard at a holiday table?

"You laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases 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 caused not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

Probably not, but that has not prevented experts from trying to.

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with ratings provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer idea than most as to what works and what fails.

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

"But they also be bad jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he adds.

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

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

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

"That's a shared moment around the table and I think it's lovely."