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

This one-liner is met by groans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner smiles, almost apologetically at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she explains.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with people around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal play sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels 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 reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly taking place inside the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to chart the areas that receive more blood.

Testing involves imaging the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural areas involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to sight and memory.

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

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical 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 we are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag 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 discover the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the world's funniest joke.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a clearer idea than many as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

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

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

"That's a shared experience around the table and I think it's wonderful."