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

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

This describes a joke-testing meeting with a firm that produces supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's owner smiles, almost apologetically at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of groans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she says.

The key to a great Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with grandparents, children and potentially friends.

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

The Neuroscience Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to experience communal laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social sound," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal amusement, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between individuals.

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

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly terrible festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

But what is truly happening within the mind when we listen to a joke?

A tremendous amount happens in reaction to comedy, it transpires.

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which parts of the brain are more active, researchers have been able to map the areas that receive more blood.

The research entails scanning the brains of healthy participants and then exposing them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a non-emotional sound, or recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a very fascinating pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also neural regions involved in both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Put these elements as a whole, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex series of neural reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Laughter

Scientists found that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the brain than the identical word when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this imply for the laughter heard around a holiday table?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," she says, "and laughter increases further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the positive factor is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

Likely not, but that has not stopped researchers from trying to.

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

Over 40,000 jokes later, with ratings provided by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what does not.

The perfect Christmas cracker pun needs to be short, he says.

"They must also need to be bad gags, puns that cause us to groan," he continues.

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

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not yours.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person find them humorous.

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