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

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a firm that makes supplies for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only ancient, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a lack of these interactions can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining 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 happens in response to humour, it transpires.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a really fascinating pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain regions involved in both planning and initiating movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the same phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

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

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she says, the feel-good factor is more likely to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's funniest joke.

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a better idea than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he says.

"They must also need to be bad gags, jokes that make us moan," he continues.

The more "awful" the gag, he says the better.

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

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

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