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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 echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a joke-testing session with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

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

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the child in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian play vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she explains, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical well-being.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Brain?

But what is actually taking place inside the mind when we hear a gag?

An awful lot occurs in reaction to humour, it transpires.

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

Testing involves imaging the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we got a really interesting activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and recall.

Put all of this together, and people listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of neural responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

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

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found around a Christmas table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker pun, and it's just a reason to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research search for the world's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

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

"They must also be bad jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common moment at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."