It is a sad fact, but there are people in this world who do not believe in Santa Claus.
I know. I feel sorry for them too. Imagine a life deprived of the excitement of knowing that Santa Claus will be coming down the chimney on Christmas Eve to deliver loads of presents. Imagine not leaving a sherry, mince pie and carrot for Rudolph only to find they’re gone on Christmas morning. Imagine a lifetime hungry to be able to visit Santa’s Grotto and meet the living, breathing Ho-Ho-Ho-ing JOY that is Santa Claus.
Some of these sad people may just be miserable killjoys having fun trying to ruin Christmas for the rest of us. Some may have evil older brothers and/or sisters who ruined their childhood to get back at us. But there is also a bewildering breed of so-called intellectuals who do everything they can to discredit the noble knight, turning to mathematics to prove his case.
Scientists have been wrestling with the feasibility of Santa’s job description since the 1850s. A recent in-depth study of the logistical task he faced on December 24 looked at the challenge of delivering 1kg of presents, which is the equivalent to an average Lego box, to the 2.1 billion children of the world in one night.
His calculations were like this…
Assuming a global average of 2.5 children per household, Santa must make 842 million stops on Christmas Eve to fulfill his requests.
Allowing for an average quarter mile between each house, science suggests you must travel 218 million miles in about a thousandth of a second to squeeze each chimney, fill a stocking, eat a mince pie, drink a glass of sherry, and make let his sleigh fly again.
To achieve this, it must travel at 1,280 miles per second.
The good news is that by traveling from east to west, Santa can potentially extend Christmas Eve to 31 p.m. Furthermore, Einstein’s theory of relativity dictates that the faster an object travels, the slower time seems to pass. So, at the speed at which Santa Claus and his reindeer are traveling, .0001 of a second is possibly achievable at a leisurely pace.
But the science is still against him.
To have enough presents, Santa’s sleigh must carry 400,000 tons of presents.
With the average non-jet powered reindeer capable of pulling just 150kg, Santa would apparently need 360,000 reindeer to lift his sleigh skyward.
This enormous cavalcade would have a total mass of around 500,000 tons which, at the required speed scientists suggest, would cause each reindeer to vaporize in a sonic boom that would flatten all trees and buildings within a 30-mile radius.
On top of this, Santa Claus would have a mass of 2 million kilograms, which caused him to combust when his reindeer came to a sudden stop.
Oh darling.
So if we are to believe in science and only science, then there can be no Santa Claus. There can be no deliveries on Christmas Eve. There are no flying reindeer. No sled. No chimney action.
It’s all a bit of a bah humbug.
It is that Science has omitted to take into account the magic and mystery of the Great Man. The simple fact is that no one knows how Santa does it. If we did, then every miserable, greedy, non-believing scientist (and courier company) would be after a piece of it. But they are not. And that’s because they just don’t get it.
And it is that Santa’s sleigh is not a time machine, a futuristic flying machine or a Tardis… it is a tangible ray of hope fueled by our imaginations and the dreams of children around the world.
And just like that, every year, Santa Claus brings magic to all of us.