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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 groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has made the cut and will feature in future crackers.

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

The secret to a great holiday cracker pun is not the same as a good joke per se. It is entirely about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly friends.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy communal laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with people at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

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

Researchers have found that a absence of such interactions can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

An awful lot occurs in response to comedy, it turns out.

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

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a very interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas involved in both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine these elements together, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated set of neural reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible Christmas cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

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

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

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

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"That's a shared moment around the table and I think it's lovely."