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

This quip is greeted with groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

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

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

"You measure the gag by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," she explains.

The secret to a good holiday cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be something that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Laughter

Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Researchers have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of endorphin release," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we hear a joke?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to comedy, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a kind of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting activation pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting language, but also neural areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals listening to a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the identical word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

It indicates we are not just responding to humorous words, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found around a holiday gathering?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with others," she says, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

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

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research project for the planet's funniest joke.

Over 40,000 gags submitted, with scores lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

The ideal festive cracker pun must be short, he explains.

"But they also be bad gags, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

"It creates a common experience around the table and I think it's lovely."