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

This one-liner is met by moans that resonate through a storage facility in London.

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

The company's owner smiles, nearly apologetically at the joke. But the pun has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"The success is gauged by the gag by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," the founder says.

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

"The goal is for the gag to be a thing that unites the eight-year-old together with the 80-year-old," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy communal amusement is not only ancient, scientists argue, it is likely to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the holiday table you are dropping into what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," says a professor.

Communal amusement, she explains, aids in forge and strengthen social bonds between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these social exchanges can significantly damage both psychological and bodily well-being.

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

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are released both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to enjoyable activities, such as laughing with friends over a particularly awful Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a silly pun with a holiday cracker," she says. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital work of making, maintaining the social bonds you have with those you love."

What Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening inside the mind when we listen to a joke?

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

Using 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 receive more blood.

Testing entails scanning the brains of volunteer subjects and then subjecting them to a collection of funny words, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we got a very fascinating pattern of neural activity," notes the neuroscientist.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the brain responsible for auditory processing and understanding language, but also brain regions associated with both planning and initiating motion and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine all of this together, and individuals listening to a joke have a complex series of brain reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Laughter

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

"This was in parts of the mind that you would use to move your face into a grin or a laugh," the professor says.

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

Laughter, according to the professor, can be infectious.

So what does this mean for the laughter heard at a Christmas table?

"People laugh harder when you know others," she says, "and you laugh more when you are fond of them or love them."

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she explains, the feel-good effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Ideal Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a psychologist established a scientific project for the world's most humorous joke.

More than 40,000 jokes submitted, with ratings provided by 350,000 people globally, he has a better idea than most as to what succeeds and what does not.

The ideal festive cracker joke must be brief, he explains.

"They must also need to be bad jokes, puns that make us moan," he continues.

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

"This is because if no-one finds it funny – it's the gag's shortcoming, not your own.

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

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