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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 resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that produces products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

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

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially neighbours.

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

The Science Of Shared Laughter

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

"So when you are chuckling with people at the Christmas table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal laughter, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

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

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

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

What Happens Inside the Mind?

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

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and starting movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements together, and people hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the same word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a laugh," she says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a holiday gathering?

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more likely to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

Likely 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 gags submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also need to be bad gags, jokes that make us groan," he adds.

The more "awful" the joke, he says the better.

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that not one person find them humorous.

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