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"How much did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

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

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good gag per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal play vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

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

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is actually happening within the brain when we hear a joke?

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the areas that receive more blood.

Testing involves scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a really interesting activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a humorous phrase is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to move your face into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she explains, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific project for the planet's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what fails.

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

"But they also be poor jokes, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that not one person find them funny.

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