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

This quip is greeted with groans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a firm that makes products for social events. Its catalogue includes festive crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can significantly damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs In the Brain?

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

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), 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 flow.

The research involves scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same phrase when followed by a neutral 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 indicates people are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that accompanies them.

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

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

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

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker joke must be short, he explains.

"But they also need to be poor jokes, puns that cause us to moan," he continues.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he states the more effective.

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

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

"That's a common experience at the gathering and I think it's wonderful."