Our dream of a white Christmas may come true! We got 18″ of it yesterday!
A snow drift off our carport
Rosy cheeks post sledding across the street
we don’t do santa, part II
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.
So, all that being said, the other day, Mark was driving with the boys in the car, and the “classic” came on the radio. The first verse says: “You may say there’s no such thing as Santa, but as for me and Grandpa, we believe.” At this point, Evan remarked to Mark, “I’m just like that guy. I believe in Santa too.” Oh my. Mark tried to reason with him, but there really wasn’t much logic in the conversation.
So, here it is–why we don’t do Santa, part II. If my well-thought out reasons in my previous post were not enough, these reasons we found online ought to do it.
Five Reasons Santa Cannot Exist:
- 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.
We don’t do santa
At the grocery store check out: “So, what is Santa bringing you for Christmas this year?” Kids: “We don’t believe in Santa.” Grocery store check-out lady and all others in earshot: gasps of horror.
We don’t do Santa in our house. What does that mean? That means the kids know that we shop for gifts for them, and we fill their stockings hung by the chimney with care (by me). We tell the kids that some families like to play a game with their children that Santa is real and brings them gifts at Christmas. But, he’s just that, a game based on a really nice man who lived a long time ago named St. Nicholas who gave money to poor families. Santa is not banned from our Christmas celebrations though. We still wave to him at the mall as we explain that it’s really a man dressed up like Santa. We still read “Twas the Night Before Christmas.” We still listen to “Here Comes Santa Claus” and “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” among other classics. (Ashlyn’s current favorite—embarrasingly enough—is Mele Kalikimaka. Evan’s is “Carol of the Bells”—no hymns there.) And, we enjoy watching the classic Christmas cartoons like Rudolph and even Merry Madagascar—though I slightly regret the latter due to the kids continually quoting Santa as saying he wants to “shake his booty.”
This is the right choice for our family—though we have told the kids that some families really like the game, so don’t tell other kids that Santa is not real in case they believe he is. There are several reasons why:
- Simply put, keeping up the Santa story can distract us from talking about Jesus’ birth and the significance of the incarnation.
- Lying is wrong. We know people who have created quite a web of lies to protect their children’s belief in Santa. I can only imagine that one day their children will be upset that their parents lied to them and may not trust their parents as they should be able to do.
- Furthermore, if we were to lie about Santa, would our children question whether we are lying about other things that are unseen. If we ask them to believe in a Santa they cannot see and they find out we have lied, will they doubt whether our testimony that God is real is true?
- We want our children to understand the value of the gifts they are given, from us or other family members, and recognize that some gifts are a real sacrifice financially and have taken a lot of effort. We want them to learn gratefulness for this sacrifice. We aren’t asking that they thank us profusely for our gifts to them or that they even know that I have used money that I was saving for another purpose in order to buy them that game. But, teaching that Santa has given the gifts, in our opinion, takes away from their understanding of generosity and sacrifice.
- We do not want them to fall prey to a works mentality. I’ve heard parents say, “You better stop that. Santa will put you on the naughty list!” We don’t want our children to think that blessings depend on whether they have been good or bad. We want them to understand what grace is–God’s unmerited favor, kindness from God that we don’t deserve. There is nothing we have done or can ever do to earn this favor. We believe that teaching them that “being bad” may put them on the “naughty list” and mean less presents or a lump of coal may very well hinder their understanding of grace.
Allow me to clarify that we do not have a “holier than thou” attitude about this. And, we are not judgmental towards families who encourage the belief in Santa. I understand that some adults have very fond memories of leaving out milk and cookies and such and want that for their children as well. It’s just our choice for our family.
ahh…the sweet love of a 5-year-old
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