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"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This one-liner is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder grins, almost apologetically at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

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

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good joke per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammal social vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps forge and strengthen social bonds between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such social exchanges can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor continues.

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

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly important work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is truly taking place inside the brain when we listen to a joke?

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

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

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting language, but also neural areas associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and people listening to a pun have a complex set of neural responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger reaction 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 use to contort your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh more when you are familiar with 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 factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

"The laughter is key. The joke is the terrible holiday cracker pun, and it's just a reason to chuckle together."

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the world's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what does not.

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

"They must also be poor gags, jokes that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

"The reason is that if no-one finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

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

"It creates a shared moment at the table and I think it's wonderful."