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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

This describes a joke-testing session with a company that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

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

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

The secret to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be something that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian play vocalisation," explains a professor.

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

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can significantly damage mental and physical health.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful festive cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

Which Happens In the Brain?

But what is truly happening within the brain when we hear a gag?

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

Using brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the regions that receive more blood flow.

Testing involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

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

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of brain responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

It means people are not just responding to funny jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard around a holiday gathering?

"You laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

Probably not, but that has not prevented experts from trying to.

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

More than tens of thousands of 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 fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke needs to be short, he explains.

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

The more "awful" the gag, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us considers them humorous.

"That's a common experience at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."