And just for fun...


"Santa is Dead"

Need Proof?

1. No known species of reindeer can fly, but there are 30,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. While most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.

2. There are 2 billion children (persons under 18 years of age) in the world, but since Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total, which is approximately 37 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per house, that means Santa has to visit 91.8 million homes (assuming there is at least one 'nice' child in every home).

3. Santa has 31 hours in which to work (allowing for different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels from east to west). Using the figures above, this works out to 822.6 visits per second, meaning that Santa has .001 seconds to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the presents under the tree, get back up the chimney, jump on the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each stop is distributed evenly around the earth (I know that is wrong, but humor me), we are talking about .78 miles per house, or a total of 75.7 million miles. To achieve this Santa's sleigh must be moving at about 650 miles per second (300,000 times the speed of sound). The average reindeer clocks in with a top speed of 15 miles per HOUR.

4. Assuming that each child gets a small gift, like a medium-sized lego set (approximately 2 lbs), the sleigh will be carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight. A 'conventional' reindeer can pull almost 300 lbs, and if we suppose that 'flying' reindeer can pull 10 times that amount, it would not be possible to do the job with only 7 or 8 reindeer. According to the figures, 214,000 reindeer would be necessary, increasing the payload to 353,430 tons (4 times the weight of the ocean liner 'Queen Elizabeth').

5. 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each, causing them to burst into flames instantaneously, and exposing the reindeer behind them. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized in .00426th of a second. Meanwhile, poor old Santa would be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb Santa would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 lbs of force.


Unfortunately, all this leads to the conclusion that if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now, due to the laws of physics.


Merry Christmas one and all, and may the Lord richly bless each and every one of you.