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

This quip is greeted with groans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

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

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

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Researchers have found that a lack of these interactions can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

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

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a really interesting pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting language, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Combine these elements together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

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

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

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

"You laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the feel-good 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 dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a research search for the world's funniest joke.

More than 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be brief, he says.

"But they also need to be poor gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

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

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker jokes is that not one person considers them humorous.

"It creates a common moment around the gathering and I think it's lovely."