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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sleigh cost? Zero, it was on the house."

This quip is greeted with groans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a company that makes products for social events. Its catalogue features Christmas crackers.

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

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

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

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

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be older than humanity.

"So when you are laughing with others at the holiday table you are dropping into what's very likely a truly ancient mammal social sound," explains a professor.

Communal amusement, she says, aids in forge and strengthen social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a lack of these social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it leads to increased levels of 'happy chemical' uptake," she continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly terrible festive cracker joke.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she 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."

Which Happens Inside the Mind?

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

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

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

The research involves scanning the brains of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of humorous words, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a very interesting pattern of activation," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and individuals listening to a pun have a complex series of brain responses that support the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers found that when a funny phrase is combined with chuckles there is a stronger response in the brain than the identical word when followed by a non-emotional sound.

"This activation occurred in areas 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 jokes, they are responding to the amusement that follows them.

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the chuckles heard around a holiday gathering?

"You laugh more when you are familiar with people," 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 factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a reason to laugh as a group."

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever find the perfect gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist set up a scientific search for the world's most humorous joke.

More than tens of thousands of gags submitted, with scores provided by 350,000 people around the world, he has a better idea than many as to what works and what does not.

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

"But they also be poor gags, puns that make us groan," he continues.

The increasingly "awful" the gag, he says the better.

"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 not one person find them humorous.

"That's a shared moment around the table and I think it's lovely."