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"How much did Santa's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This joke is greeted with moans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

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

The key to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be something that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Communal laughter, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can seriously harm mental and physical well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting language, but also neural areas involved in both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would use to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh harder when you know people," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker pun must be short, he explains.

"They must also be bad gags, puns that make us moan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common experience around the table and I believe it's wonderful."