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"How much did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes products for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly 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 volume of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and potentially friends.

"You want the joke to be something that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to experience shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with people around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian social vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal laughter, she says, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Happens In the Brain?

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

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really fascinating pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements together, and people hearing a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

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

"This was in parts of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found around a Christmas table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker pun, and it's just a pretext to laugh together."

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a research search for the world's most humorous joke.

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

The perfect festive cracker pun needs to be short, he explains.

"They must also be poor jokes, jokes that make us groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person considers them funny.

"It creates a shared experience around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."