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

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

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a company that produces products for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

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 chuckling with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a really ancient mammalian play sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of such interactions can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in enhanced levels of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

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

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex set of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is combined with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to move your face into a smile or a chuckle," she explains.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard at a Christmas table?

"You laugh harder when you know people," she says, "and you laugh 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 caused not by the joke in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a research search for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what does not.

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

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

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

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

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us find them humorous.

"It creates a shared experience at the table and I think it's lovely."