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

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

This describes a joke-testing session with a company that makes supplies for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

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

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

The secret to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday dinner table with grandparents, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with people around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's very likely a really primordial mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

What Happens Inside the Mind?

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

An awful lot occurs in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which areas of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to chart the regions that get more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating pattern of activation," says the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a complex set of neural responses that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Laughter

Researchers found that when a humorous word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," the professor explains.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard around a Christmas table?

"You laugh more when you know others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate gag?

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

Years ago, a professor set up a research search for the planet's funniest gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags later, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a clearer understanding than most as to what succeeds and what fails.

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

"They must also need to be poor jokes, puns that make us groan," he continues.

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

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

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

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