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

This one-liner is greeted with groans that echo through a storage facility in London.

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

The firm's founder grins, almost apologetically at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in future crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is entirely about the setting - in this case, the communal laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be something that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate stress and pain and in response to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is actually happening within the mind when we hear a gag?

An awful lot happens in response to humour, it turns out.

Employing brain scanning technology, a type of neural imager which shows which parts of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

The research involves imaging the minds of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting activation pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also neural regions associated with both planning and initiating movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous word is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the same word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to contort your expression into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found at a Christmas table?

"You laugh harder when you know others," she says, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate gag?

Probably not, but that has not stopped experts from attempting to.

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific search for the planet's funniest joke.

More than 40,000 gags later, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"But they also be bad gags, puns that make us moan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – 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 moment at the gathering and I think it's wonderful."