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

This one-liner is greeted with moans that echo through a warehouse in the capital.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, children and possibly friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people around the holiday table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have found that a lack of such interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin release," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful festive 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 truly vital task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the brain when we hear a joke?

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it turns out.

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

The research entails scanning the brains of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a very fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also brain regions involved in both planning and initiating movement and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the same phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a grin or a laugh," she says.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh more when you know people," she says, "and laughter increases further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor established a scientific search for the planet's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with ratings lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also be bad gags, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the better.

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

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"That's a common moment around the table and I think it's lovely."