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"How much did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This one-liner is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in the capital.

We're at a joke-testing session with a firm that produces products for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

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

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

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

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

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of such interactions can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin release," she adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and starting motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people hearing a pun have a complex set of neural reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

It indicates we are not just responding to funny words, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a Christmas table?

"People laugh more 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 puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a research project for the world's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer idea than most as to what works and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker pun needs to be brief, he says.

"They must also need to be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to groan," he continues.

The more "awful" the joke, he says the more effective.

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that not one person find them funny.

"It creates a common experience at the gathering and I think it's wonderful."