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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a storage facility in the capital.

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

The firm's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared laughter is not only ancient, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal social vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of such social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Mind?

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

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood.

The research involves imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Put all of this together, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of brain responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," she explains.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

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

More than 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke must be short, he says.

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

The more "terrible" the joke, he says the better.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

"It creates a common moment at the table and I believe it's wonderful."