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"What was the price did Father Christmas's sled cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

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

This describes a joke-testing session with a firm that produces products for social events. Its repertoire features Christmas crackers.

The company's owner smiles, nearly sheepishly at the joke. But the joke has made the cut and will feature in upcoming crackers.

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

The secret to a good Christmas cracker pun is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the context - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be a thing that brings the child together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is probably to be older than humanity.

"Therefore when you are laughing with people at the Christmas table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly ancient mammal play sound," explains a neuroscience expert.

Shared laughter, she says, aids in make and maintain social bonds between people.

Scientists have discovered that a lack of these interactions can seriously harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it leads to enhanced levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as laughing with loved ones over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"You're not just laughing at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," she says. "You are actually doing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the brain when we hear a joke?

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

Employing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a type of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are working harder, scientists have been able to map the areas that get more blood flow.

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

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the mind in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also neural areas associated with both preparation and initiating movement and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine all of this together, and individuals listening to a pun have a complex series of brain responses that underpin the laughter we experience.

The Infectious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is paired with chuckles there is a greater response in the brain than the identical phrase when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This activation occurred in areas of the mind that you would employ to contort your expression into a grin or a chuckle," she explains.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this imply for the laughter found at a Christmas gathering?

"You laugh harder when you know people," she says, "and you laugh further when you like them or care for them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good factor is more probable to be triggered not by the gag in itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Quest for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the perfect gag?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the planet's most humorous gag.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with scores lodged by 350,000 participants around the world, he has a clearer idea than many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be bad jokes, puns that make us groan," he continues.

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

"This is because if no-one laughs – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

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