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

This quip is met by groans that echo through a warehouse in London.

We're at a joke-testing meeting with a firm that makes products for gatherings. Its repertoire includes festive crackers.

The company's founder smiles, nearly sheepishly at the gag. But the joke has been selected and will feature in upcoming crackers.

"You measure the joke by the number of moans and the loudness of the groans around the table," she explains.

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the same as a good gag per se. It is entirely about the setting - in this instance, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, children and possibly friends.

"You want the joke to be something that brings the child together with the grandparent," she adds.

The Science Of Communal Laughter

Gathering to enjoy shared laughter is not only nothing new, experts argue, it is probably to be pre-human.

"Therefore when you are laughing with others around the Christmas dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really ancient mammalian play sound," says a professor.

Shared amusement, she explains, aids in make and maintain social connections between people.

Researchers have found that a absence of such social exchanges can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of 'happy chemical' uptake," the professor adds.

These natural chemicals are the brain's "feel-good compounds" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in reaction to pleasurable activities, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful Christmas cracker gag.

"You're not just laughing at a silly joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are in fact doing a lot of the truly vital task of building, preserving the connections you have with those you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Mind?

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

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

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

Testing involves scanning the minds of healthy subjects and then exposing them to a collection of funny phrases, paired with either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we got a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," notes the professor.

A gag stimulates not just the parts of the mind in charge of hearing and interpreting language, but also neural regions involved in both planning and initiating motion and those linked to vision and memory.

Combine all of this as a whole, and people hearing a pun have a complex set of neural reactions that support the laughter we experience.

The Contagious Power of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous phrase 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 smile or a laugh," the professor explains.

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

Amusement, says the professor, can be infectious.

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

"People laugh harder when you know others," she notes, "and laughter increases more when you are fond of them or care for them."

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

"It's the laughter. The gag is the dreadful holiday cracker joke, and it's just a pretext to chuckle together."

The Search for the Perfect Cracker Joke

Is it possible to discover the ultimate gag?

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

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

Over tens of thousands of gags later, with ratings provided by hundreds of thousands of participants around the world, he has a better idea than most as to what works and what fails.

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

"But they also be poor jokes, puns that make us moan," he continues.

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

"This is because if nobody laughs – it's the joke's shortcoming, not yours.

"The fascinating part about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

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