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

This joke is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

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

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

Which Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the mind when we listen to a gag?

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and memory.

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

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the identical phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found at a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or love them."

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

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

Probably not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's most humorous gag.

More than 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun needs to be brief, he explains.

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

The more "terrible" the gag, he says the more effective.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

"That's a shared moment around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."