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

This quip is greeted with moans that echo through a warehouse in London.

We're at a humor-evaluation meeting with a firm that produces supplies for social events. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

The company's founder grins, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has made the cut and will appear in future crackers.

"You measure the gag by the volume of groans and the loudness of the groans at the table," she says.

The secret to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a good joke in itself. It is all about the setting - in this case, the shared laughter of the Christmas meal with elders, kids and potentially friends.

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

The Science Of Shared Amusement

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only ancient, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are chuckling with others at the holiday table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammalian social vocalisation," explains a neuroscience expert.

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

Scientists have discovered that a absence of these social exchanges can seriously harm mental and physical health.

"Those you converse with, and share laughter with, it results in increased levels of 'happy chemical' release," the professor continues.

Endorphins are the body's "feel-good compounds" and are released both to reduce stress and pain and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful festive cracker gag.

"You're not just chuckling at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are in fact performing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the social bonds you have with those you care about."

What Occurs Inside the Mind?

But what is actually happening inside the mind when we hear a joke?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of neural imager which indicates which areas of the mind are more active, scientists have been able to chart the areas that get more blood.

The research involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then subjecting them to a database of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

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

A gag activates not just the areas of the brain responsible for auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain areas associated with both planning and initiating motion and those involved in sight and recall.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a complex series of brain reactions that underpin the amusement we experience.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

Researchers discovered that when a funny word is paired with chuckles there is a stronger response in the mind than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to contort your face into a smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be contagious.

So what does this mean for the laughter found at a holiday table?

"You laugh harder when you know others," she says, "and you laugh more when you like them or love them."

When it comes to festive cracker puns, she explains, the feel-good factor is more likely to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the reaction to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the perfect joke?

Likely not, but that has not stopped experts from trying to.

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

More than 40,000 gags later, with ratings provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

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

"But they also need to be bad gags, jokes that cause us to moan," he continues.

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

"This is because if nobody finds it funny – it's the gag's fault, not yours.

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

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