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

This quip is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue features festive crackers.

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

"You measure the joke by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

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

The Science Of Communal Laughter

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

"So when you are laughing with others at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal social vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

Scientists have found that a absence of such social exchanges can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of endorphin release," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "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 Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we hear a joke?

An awful lot happens in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which shows which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Put all of this as a whole, and people hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh harder when you know others," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the positive effect is more likely to be triggered not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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 gag.

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

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

"They must also need to be poor gags, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The more "terrible" the gag, he states the better.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"It creates a common experience around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."