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

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

We're at a joke-testing session with a company that makes products for gatherings. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of groans and the intensity of the groans around the table," she says.

The secret to a great Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that unites the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Laughter

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

"So when you are laughing with people at the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammal social vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

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

Researchers have discovered that a lack of such interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily well-being.

"The people you talk to, and laugh with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with loved ones over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with the people you love."

What Occurs In the Brain?

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

A tremendous amount occurs in response to comedy, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which indicates which parts of the mind are working harder, researchers have been able to map the regions that get more blood.

Testing entails scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"During the study we observed a really interesting activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A joke activates not just the parts of the mind in charge of auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain regions associated with both planning and starting motion and those involved in sight and memory.

Combine these elements as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a complex series of neural reactions that support the amusement we hear.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would employ to move your face into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

It means people are not just reacting to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that accompanies them.

Amusement, according to the expert, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the chuckles found at a holiday table?

"People laugh more when you are familiar with people," she notes, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker jokes, she says, the feel-good factor is more probable to be caused not by the gag itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

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

In 2001, a professor set up a scientific project for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with ratings provided by 350,000 people around the world, he has a clearer understanding than many as to what works and what fails.

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

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

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

"The reason is that if nobody laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not your own.

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

"It creates a common experience at the gathering and I think it's lovely."