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

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

We're at a joke-testing session with a firm that produces products for gatherings. Its catalogue includes Christmas crackers.

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

"The success is gauged by the joke by the volume of moans and the loudness of the groans at the table," the founder explains.

The key to a good holiday cracker joke is not the same as a stand-up joke per se. It is all about the context - in this case, the communal amusement of the Christmas dinner table with elders, kids and potentially neighbours.

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

The Neuroscience Behind Shared Laughter

Coming together to experience communal amusement is not only ancient, experts say, it is probably to be pre-human.

"So when you are laughing with others at the holiday dinner you are dropping into what's almost certainly a really primordial mammalian play vocalisation," explains a professor.

Shared laughter, she says, helps forge and strengthen social connections between individuals.

Researchers have found that a absence of these interactions can significantly harm both psychological and bodily health.

"The people you converse with, and laugh with, it results in increased amounts of endorphin uptake," the professor continues.

These natural chemicals are the body's "happy chemicals" and are produced both to alleviate tension and discomfort and in response to pleasurable experiences, such as chuckling with friends over a truly awful festive cracker joke.

"It's not simply laughing at a foolish pun with a holiday cracker," she states. "You are actually performing a lot of the truly vital task of making, maintaining the connections you have with the people you love."

Which Occurs In the Mind?

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

A tremendous amount happens in response to humour, it transpires.

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

Testing entails imaging the brains of volunteer subjects and then exposing them to a database of humorous phrases, accompanied by either a neutral sound, or recorded laughter.

"In the scanner we observed a really fascinating activation pattern of neural activity," says the neuroscientist.

A joke stimulates not just the areas of the brain in charge of hearing and understanding speech, but also brain areas associated with both planning and starting movement and those linked to vision and recall.

Put all of this as a whole, and individuals hearing a joke have a sophisticated series of neural reactions that underpin the laughter we hear.

The Infectious Nature of Chuckles

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

"This was in areas of the brain that you would employ to move your face into a smile or a laugh," she says.

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

Amusement, says the expert, can be contagious.

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

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

When it comes to Christmas cracker jokes, she says, the positive effect is more likely to be triggered not by the gag itself, but from the response to it.

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

The Search for the Perfect Festive Pun

Will we ever discover the ultimate joke?

Probably not, but that has not stopped researchers from attempting to.

Years ago, a psychologist set up a research project for the planet's most humorous joke.

More than tens of thousands of jokes later, with ratings provided by 350,000 participants globally, he has a better understanding than most as to what works and what does not.

The ideal Christmas cracker pun needs to be brief, he explains.

"But they also need to be poor gags, puns that make us groan," he continues.

The more "terrible" the gag, he states the more effective.

"The reason is that if nobody finds it funny – it's the joke's fault, not yours.

"What's interesting about the holiday cracker puns is that none of us considers them humorous.

"It creates a common moment at the table and I think it's lovely."