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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

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

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

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

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

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience communal laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with others around the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly ancient mammalian social vocalisation," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

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

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Happens In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place inside the brain when we listen to a gag?

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," says the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural areas associated with both planning and initiating motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to move your expression into a smile or a chuckle," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard around a Christmas gathering?

"People laugh harder when you know others," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific search for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 jokes later, with scores provided by 350,000 people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be short, he explains.

"But they also need to be bad jokes, puns that make us groan," he adds.

The increasingly "terrible" the joke, he says the more effective.

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person considers them humorous.

"That's a common experience at the gathering and I think it's wonderful."