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

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

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes Christmas crackers.

The firm's owner grins, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The key to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to experience communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian social sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she explains, helps make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Brain?

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

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

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which areas of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain regions involved in both planning and initiating motion and those involved in vision and recall.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous phrase is paired with laughter there is a stronger response in the mind than the same phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard around a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you know people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or love them."

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

"It's the laughter. The gag is the terrible holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a research search for the world's funniest gag.

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The perfect festive cracker joke needs to be brief, he says.

"They must also be bad jokes, jokes that make us groan," he adds.

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not your own.

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

"It creates a common experience at the gathering and I believe it's lovely."