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

This quip is met by moans that echo through a storage facility in the capital.

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a company that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The company's founder grins, almost apologetically at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

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

"So when you are laughing with others around the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal play vocalisation," explains a professor.

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

Scientists have discovered that a absence of such interactions can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

Using 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 areas that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and people hearing a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

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

It means we are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, says the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard around a Christmas gathering?

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

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good factor is more likely to be triggered not by the gag in 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 laugh together."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the planet's funniest joke.

More than tens of thousands of jokes submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

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

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

The increasingly "terrible" the joke, he states the better.

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us find them funny.

"That's a shared moment around the table and I believe it's wonderful."