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

This one-liner is met by groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes supplies for gatherings. Its repertoire features festive crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, almost apologetically at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

The secret to a good holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal laughter of the holiday meal with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"You want the gag to be a thing that brings the eight-year-old in harmony with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Of Communal Amusement

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a really primordial mammal social vocalisation," says a professor.

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

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

"The people you talk to, and share laughter with, it leads to increased amounts of 'happy chemical' release," she continues.

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

"You're not just laughing at a silly pun with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

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

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which shows which areas of the mind are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood flow.

The research involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

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

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those involved in vision and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a funny phrase is paired with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the same phrase when accompanied by a non-emotional sound.

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

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles heard around a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good factor is more likely to be caused not by the gag in itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's funniest gag.

Over tens of thousands of gags later, with scores lodged by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what fails.

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

"They must also be poor jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

The more "awful" the gag, he says the more effective.

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

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker jokes is that none of us find them humorous.

"That's a common moment at the table and I believe it's wonderful."