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

This quip is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes products for social events. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The key to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that unites the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people around the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian play sound," explains a professor.

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

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

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we hear a gag?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding language, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and starting motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of brain reactions that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

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

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

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research project for the planet's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

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

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he states the more effective.

"This is because if no-one 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.

"That's a shared experience at the table and I think it's lovely."