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"What was the price did Santa's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

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

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the same as a good gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Neuroscience Behind Communal Amusement

Coming together to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammal social vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have discovered that a absence of such interactions can seriously damage mental and physical well-being.

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she 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 experiences, such as chuckling with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with those you love."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

Using brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to map the regions that receive more blood.

The research involves imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the areas of the brain responsible for hearing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas associated with both preparation and starting motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a sophisticated series of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the brain that you would use to contort your face into a smile or a chuckle," the professor says.

It means people are not just responding to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found at a Christmas gathering?

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good effect is more probable to be caused not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect joke?

Probably not, but that has not prevented experts from trying to.

In 2001, a psychologist established a research project for the planet's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker joke needs to be brief, he explains.

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

The more "terrible" the joke, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"That's a shared experience around the table and I believe it's lovely."