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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 resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

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

"So when you are chuckling with people at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian play sound," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm mental and physical well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

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

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

Which Happens In the Brain?

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

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the minds of healthy participants and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex set of neural responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

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

It indicates we are not just reacting to funny words, they are reacting to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

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

"The laughter is key. The joke is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle as a group."

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker pun needs to be short, he says.

"They must also be poor gags, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

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

"That's a shared experience around the gathering and I believe it's wonderful."