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"What was the price did Santa's sleigh cost? Nothing, it was on the house."

This quip is met by moans that resonate through a warehouse in London.

This describes a humor-evaluation session with a firm that produces products for social events. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

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

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

The key to a great holiday cracker joke is not the identical as a stand-up gag in itself. It is all about the context - in this instance, the shared laughter of the holiday dinner table with elders, kids and possibly neighbours.

"The goal is for the joke to be something that brings the child together with the grandparent," she states.

The Science Behind Communal Amusement

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

"So when you are laughing with others at the Christmas table you are engaging in what's almost certainly a truly primordial mammal play vocalisation," says a neuroscience expert.

Communal laughter, she says, helps make and maintain social bonds between people.

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

"Those you talk to, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of endorphin uptake," she adds.

Endorphins are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as laughing with friends over a truly terrible Christmas cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish joke with a Christmas cracker," the expert states. "You are actually performing a lot of the really important work of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you care about."

Which Occurs Inside the Brain?

But what is truly happening within the mind when we hear a joke?

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

Employing brain scanning technology, a kind of brain scanner which shows which parts of the brain are working harder, researchers have been able to chart the areas that receive more blood flow.

The research entails scanning the minds of volunteer participants and then exposing them to a collection of funny words, paired with either a neutral sound, or pre-recorded chuckles.

"In the scanner we observed a very fascinating activation pattern of activation," says the professor.

A joke activates not just the parts of the brain in charge of auditory processing and interpreting speech, but also brain regions involved in both preparation and starting movement and those linked to sight and memory.

Combine these elements together, and individuals listening to a joke have a sophisticated set of brain reactions that support the laughter we hear.

The Contagious Nature of Chuckles

Scientists discovered that when a humorous word is paired with chuckles there is a greater reaction in the brain than the same word when followed by a neutral sound.

"This was in areas of the mind that you would use to contort your expression into a smile or a chuckle," she says.

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

Laughter, says the expert, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker puns, she says, the positive effect is more probable to be triggered not by the joke itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Quest for the Ideal Cracker Joke

Is it possible to find the ultimate joke?

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

Years ago, a professor established a research search for the world's funniest 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 many as to what works and what fails.

The ideal Christmas cracker joke must be brief, he says.

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

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

"The reason is that if no-one laughs – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

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

"That's a shared experience at the table and I believe it's wonderful."