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"What was the price did Santa's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This quip is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The key to a good holiday cracker pun is not the same as a good joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with people around the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammalian play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

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

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of endorphin release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really vital task of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we hear a joke?

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

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

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

"In the scanner we observed a really interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also neural areas associated with both planning and initiating movement and those linked to vision and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a complex set of brain responses that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a humorous word is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the same word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

It means we are not just responding to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard around a Christmas table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

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

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

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a research search for the planet's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

"They must also be bad gags, jokes that make us moan," he continues.

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

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

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

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