What’s your least favorite Christmas song? You know, the one that comes on the radio and forces you to change the station from the all-Christmas-all-the-time station to news radio. It’s between two for me: (1) “Last Christmas, I Gave You My Heart.” As if the Wham 1984 song wasn’t miserable enough, there have been several recent remakes. So, now the radio stations play all the versions. Gag me. (2) “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer.” Did you know that song is 30 years old? The guy who wrote it is now 73 and still traveling around to morning shows and the like to sing it. As much as I loathe what some people have deemed a Christmas classic (yuck! double yuck! how can this song be compared to “O Holy Night”?), Evan likes it. If I don’t change the station with lightening fast, ninja-like speed, he may insist that I keep it on. And, frankly, whining from my own son is worse than, well, one of the most annoying songs ever written…so, I let it be.
- No known species of reindeer can fly. Now, there are 300,000 species of 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.
- There are approximately 2 billion children (defined as persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload down to 15% of the original total – 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s only 91.8 million homes. One may presume that there is at least one good child in each.
- Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. This works out to 822.6 visits per second. That is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh, and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which we know to be false but will accept for the purpose of these calculations), we are talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus eating, etc. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run 15 miles per hour at the most.
- The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-size set of Lego building blocks (about two pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that flying reindeer exist (see point 1), can fly very quickly (see point 2), and can pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight or even nine reindeer. We would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparision, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth 2, the massive oceanliner.
- 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within .00426 seconds. Santa, meanwhile, would be subjected to forces 17,500 times greater than normal gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion, if Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
Before I get any hate mail, no, we didn’t read this to Evan in an effort to set him straight. We’ve taught them all it’s just a game, and I guess he wants to play the game this year. We’ll let him play it. We’ll just keep reminding him that he’s doing a good job playing the game. But, next time, I will make sure we change the station and listen to something infinitely more helpful than the Grandma/Reindeer song like the traffic report for the entire metro area.
My son (a not very mature 6 year old) sometimes shows signs of thinking Santa is real, even though we correct him. But my thought is that we can just let it go. He knows we tell him there is no real Santa, and we’ve read the books explaining where the legend of Santa comes from, so when it finally hits him that Santa isn’t real he won’t be crushed that we fed him the story. My problem in childhood was that bad feeling when I realized my parents had made up and perpetuated the lie. I really felt betrayed. My son will only have himself to blame.
As for Santa not being able to visit all those houses so fast, etc. Didn’t you watch Prep & Landing? That should have quelled any problems anyone had with the how Santa gets his job done!
And finally, if you really want to freak your kid out (maybe I’m the only mom with a mean streak here) go to http://portablenorthpole.tv and fill in your child’s information and put him on the naughty list. If that doesn’t make your kid wish Santa weren’t real, nothing will. (Don’t worry, nice moms, I didn’t let my son watch the video after I made it. He would have needed some serious therapy after Santa told him he “should shut up now and then”). It was too funny to resist making it, though! The boy really does need to shut up.
Hey Kelly! So good to get caught up on the blogs I love to read! I love the reindeer bow you found for Ashlyn – how fun!
Personally…well, I am still teetering on what I will do about Christmas once I have a child. I grew up doing the whole Santa thing…and loved it! And my parents want me to do the Santa thing with Emma…but the thing is, I am her Mom…I am the one who will make those decisions. I almsot wish I had a husband to make the decision with me…oh well…at least I get the remote…and lots more time to decide what I will do with Santa!
LOL-I was going to ask if you read that to Evan. He would have been like, HUH??
I’m sure he just wants to join in the fun with the rest of the kids. In public school, it might be hard to find families that teach the truth like you guys do. As long as he knows it’s a game, I think it’s harmless. I think once this game is over with my kids, they might be terrified to know that Mommy and Daddy are the ones who buy ALL the gifts!….Then again, they might behave better! They’ve heard that Santa’s watching, but I don’t tell them that…..(that guilt you talk about of feeding into the lie, keeps me from saying that) They do know that they get gifts form us too, so that helps a little.
For now we are having fun with this game. My very conservative Christian Father, even puts on a Santa suit every year and makes a stop at our Christmas party, just to see the excitement in all the little faces!
LOL – this one was hilarious. I liked the first post, and agreed with the spiritual tone of it, even if our way of doing it looks a bit different. But this post?! A pure delight for the logical side of my brain :)
No matter what Evan says now, he’ll always know the real meaning of the season, thanks to you and hubby’s intentional, loving, consistent training. If he claims to “believe” for now, it’s just part of the “magic” of the season. We all could use a little child-like wonder these days.
But loving that song?! I got nothin’ on that one. I do NOT get the fascination with that or any of those type of weird holiday songs. I. DO. NOT. GET. IT.!!!!
:)
the song I always have to change is the Christmas Shoes song…call me heartless I know, but I just can’t stand it. Maybe it’s because it’s just so sad and why do they think such a sad song and sand movie to so with it is good for Christmas cheer. It doesn’t cheer me, it makes me want to cry. So it gets the boot each time. I will agree that the line, “last Christmas I gave you my heart the very next day you gave it away…” is also not so full of cheer. But at least this year he is saving it for someone special. At least it not last year I gave you my heart (or shoes), the very next day you died…then it would just be sad.
oh my goodness, kelly, this gave me a good laugh.
LOL…We’ve always shared the truth with J as well. We still do small stocking stuffers and leave a pay-out under the pillow when he loses a tooth…but with that one J and my on going joke is that I make D dress up in a pink tutu and give him a sparkly wand to wave. J cackles and D scowls at us ;o)
This is one of my favorite Christmas books: https://www1.vombooks.com/qry/qe_store.taf?_function=detail&_peid=955&_id=A7535CC748&_code=P&_nc=f88810095a91f1b4a10870d8a0c77b3a
Have a wonderful Christmas Kelly!
Hugs,
M~