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"How much did Santa's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This joke is met by groans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that makes products for social events. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The firm's founder smiles, almost apologetically at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the gag by the number of groans and the intensity of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good Christmas cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke per se. It is all about the setting - in this case, the communal amusement of the holiday meal with elders, children and possibly friends.

"You want the gag to be a thing that unites the child in harmony with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Shared Amusement

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

"So when you are laughing with people around the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian play vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a lack of such interactions can significantly harm mental and physical well-being.

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

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

"You're not just chuckling at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," the expert states. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly vital work of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Happens Inside the Brain?

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

An awful lot occurs in response to humour, it turns out.

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of neural imager which shows which areas of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

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

"During the study we got a really interesting pattern of neural activity," notes the professor.

A gag activates not just the parts of the mind responsible for hearing and understanding language, but also neural areas associated with both preparation and initiating motion and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine all of this together, and individuals hearing a pun have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that support the amusement we experience.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

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

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she says.

It indicates we are not just responding to funny jokes, they are responding to the laughter that follows them.

Amusement, according to the professor, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles found around a Christmas gathering?

"People laugh harder when you know people," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

"The laughter is key. The gag is the terrible Christmas cracker joke, and it's just a reason to chuckle as a group."

The Quest for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever find the ultimate joke?

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

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

Over 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of people globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke must be short, he says.

"But they also be bad gags, jokes that cause us to groan," he adds.

The more "terrible" the joke, he says the better.

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the Christmas cracker puns is that not one person find them funny.

"It creates a shared experience around the table and I believe it's wonderful."