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

This quip is greeted with moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a firm that makes products for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The key to a great holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

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

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people around the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammalian play sound," explains a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

What Occurs In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

A tremendous amount occurs in response to humour, it turns out.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which indicates which parts of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and interpreting language, but also neural areas involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to sight and recall.

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

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

It means we are not just responding to humorous words, they are responding to the amusement that follows them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard at a holiday gathering?

"You laugh more when you know 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 dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a research search for the world's most humorous gag.

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke must be brief, he says.

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

The more "terrible" the gag, he says the more effective.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"That's a shared experience around the table and I believe it's lovely."