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

This joke is greeted with moans that echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian social sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the mind when we listen to a gag?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research entails imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

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

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

Combine all of this as a whole, and people listening to a pun have a complex series of brain responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater response in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

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

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

Amusement, according to the expert, can be contagious.

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

"People laugh harder when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and laughter increases further when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be caused not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

Likely not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research search for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with ratings lodged by 350,000 people around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun must be short, he explains.

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

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

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that none of us considers them funny.

"That's a shared moment around the table and I believe it's wonderful."