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"How much did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This quip is greeted with moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's owner grins, nearly apologetically at the gag. But the pun has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the joke by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder explains.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the same as a stand-up gag per se. It is all about the setting - in this instance, the shared amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and potentially neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

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

"So when you are laughing with people at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared laughter, she explains, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced amounts of endorphin release," the professor adds.

Endorphins are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly important task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Occurs In the Brain?

But what is actually taking place within the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which areas of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded laughter.

"During the study we observed a really interesting activation pattern of activation," notes the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas involved in both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Put all of this together, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex set of brain responses that support the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny word is combined with chuckles there is a greater response in the mind than the same phrase when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

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

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a holiday table?

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

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

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible holiday cracker pun, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific search for the planet's most humorous joke.

Over 40,000 gags later, with scores provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

The perfect festive cracker joke needs to be brief, he says.

"But they also need to be poor jokes, jokes that cause us to moan," he adds.

The increasingly "awful" the joke, he states the better.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

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

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