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

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

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces products for social events. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, almost sheepishly at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the joke by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder says.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and potentially friends.

"You want the gag to be something that unites the child together with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Science Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared amusement is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian social sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared amusement, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Scientists have found that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously damage mental and physical health.

"The people you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly terrible festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the really vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place within the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

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

The research involves imaging the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded laughter.

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

A joke activates not just the areas of the mind responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain areas associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and memory.

Put these elements together, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Scientists found that when a humorous phrase is combined with laughter there is a greater reaction in the mind than the identical phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your face into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates we are not just reacting to humorous jokes, they are reacting to the amusement that follows them.

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"You laugh harder when you are familiar with others," she says, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

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

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

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Will we ever discover the perfect joke?

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

Years ago, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than 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 fails.

The perfect festive cracker pun must be short, he explains.

"They must also be bad jokes, jokes that cause us to groan," he continues.

The increasingly "terrible" the gag, he says 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 puns is that not one person find them funny.

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