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"What was the price did Santa's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

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

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that makes products for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The company's founder smiles, almost sheepishly at the gag. But the pun has made the cut 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 says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

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

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

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

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

A tremendous amount occurs in response to comedy, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the areas that receive more blood flow.

The research involves imaging the brains of volunteer participants and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas involved in both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a joke have a complex series of neural responses that support the amusement we hear.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase is paired with laughter there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Laughter, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the positive effect is more probable to be caused not by the joke in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the world's funniest gag.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun must be brief, he says.

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

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us considers them funny.

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