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

This joke is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation meeting with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

The firm's founder grins, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming 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 key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the communal laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and potentially friends.

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Neuroscience Of Communal Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal laughter is not only ancient, experts say, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are chuckling with others at the Christmas dinner you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Scientists have found that a absence of such interactions can seriously damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a particularly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is truly taking place within the brain when we listen to a gag?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to humour, it turns out.

Using brain scanning technology, a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

The research entails imaging the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a really interesting pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag activates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Put these elements together, and people listening to a pun have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the brain that you would use to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

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

Laughter, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard at a holiday gathering?

"You laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and you laugh further when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

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

The Quest for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the perfect joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a research project for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 jokes later, with scores lodged by 350,000 people globally, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what fails.

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

"But they also need to be bad jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he says the more effective.

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the joke's fault, not your own.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that not one person considers them funny.

"That's a common experience at the table and I think it's lovely."