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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces supplies for social events. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and potentially friends.

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

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal play sound," 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 harm mental and physical well-being.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in response to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you care about."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is actually happening inside the brain when we listen to a joke?

A tremendous amount occurs in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to chart the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a collection of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we got a very interesting pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and people hearing a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

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

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a Christmas table?

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The joke is the dreadful Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a professor established a research search for the world's most humorous gag.

More than 40,000 jokes later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he explains.

"They must also be poor jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he states the better.

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us considers them humorous.

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