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"How much did Father Christmas's sled cost? Zero, it was on the house."

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

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

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

"The success is gauged by the gag by the volume of moans and the intensity of the groans around the table," the founder 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 communal amusement of the Christmas meal with grandparents, kids and possibly neighbours.

"You want the joke to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old in harmony with the 80-year-old," she adds.

The Neuroscience Of Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience shared laughter is not only nothing new, scientists argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"So when you are chuckling with people at the holiday dinner you are engaging in what's very likely a truly primordial mammalian play sound," explains a professor.

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

Researchers have found that a lack of such interactions can significantly damage mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in enhanced amounts of endorphin uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly joke with a holiday cracker," the expert says. "You are actually performing a lot of the really vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with the people you care about."

What Happens In the Mind?

But what is actually taking place inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

Using brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which shows which parts of the brain are more active, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood flow.

Testing entails scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of funny words, accompanied by either a non-emotional sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for auditory processing and interpreting language, but also brain regions associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to sight and recall.

Combine these elements together, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural responses that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is combined with laughter there is a stronger reaction in the mind than the identical word when accompanied by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the brain 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 words, they are reacting to the laughter that accompanies them.

Laughter, says the professor, can be contagious.

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

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

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

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

The Search for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Will we ever find the ultimate gag?

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

In 2001, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 gags submitted, with scores provided by hundreds of thousands of participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

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

"But they also be poor jokes, puns that cause us to groan," he adds.

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

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

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that not one person considers them humorous.

"That's a common experience around the gathering and I think it's wonderful."