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

This quip is met by groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, almost apologetically at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday meal with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with people around the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a professor.

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

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

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot happens in response to comedy, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood.

Testing entails scanning the minds of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and people hearing a pun have a complex set of neural responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

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

"This was in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found at a holiday gathering?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker pun must be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be bad jokes, puns that cause us to moan," he adds.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he says the more effective.

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"That's a common moment at the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."