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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder says.

The key to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be something that brings the child in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

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

"So when you are laughing with people around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

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

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals 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 loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

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

Using brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those linked to sight and memory.

Put these elements as a whole, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

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

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

It means we are not just reacting to funny words, they are responding to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard at a holiday table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you like 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 pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the planet's funniest joke.

Over tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker joke must be brief, he says.

"But they also be poor gags, jokes that make us moan," he adds.

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

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

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us find them funny.

"That's a shared experience at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."