No, Virginia, there isn't a Santa Claus

 

Here's the smartest article I ever read about Santa Claus as published in Spy Magazine's January/February 1990 issue.  Several versions can be found on line; I believe this is how it originally appeared.  Happy holidays.

                    NO VIRGINIA, THERE ISN'T A SANTA CLAUS


     Do you believe in Santa Claus?  This is a complex theological question
that each child must decide for him- or herself.  Until now, that is.  With the
aid of computers, SPY JR. has conducted a rigourous statistical investigation
into the question of Santa's existence.  Be forewarned: you may not like our
conclusions.

     We begin our investigation by assuming that Santa Claus really does exist.
Now, if you've learned anything about human nature, you know it's highly
unlikely that a normal man would choose, for no particular reason, to devote
his life to making toys and delivering them to boys and girls the world over.
But this is an objective inquiry, and questions of motivation aren't relavent.
We want only to know whether such a man could accomplish his mission.

     Santa's first obstacle is that no known species of reindeer can fly.
However, scientists estimate that out of the earth's roughly 2 million species
of living organisms, 300,000 or so have yet to be classified.  So, even though
most of these undiscovered species are insects and germs, we can't rule out the
slight possibility that a species of flying reindeer does, in fact, exist.  And
that no one besides Santa has ever seen one.



     A bigger obstacle for Santa is that there are over 2 billion children
under the age of 18 in the world.  The good news is that he needs to deliver
presetns only to Christian children, of whom there are approximately 378
million (according to figures provided by the Population Reference Bureau).
Let's assume that 15 percent of these Christian children have been bad and are
thus - like Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children - ineligible for gift
giving.  Still, at an average rate of 3.5 children per household, Santa has a
backbreaking 91.8 million homes to visit on any given Christmas Eve.

     Fortunately, Santa has 31 hours of Christmas Eve darkness to visit all
these homes if he travels from east to west, thanks to the rotation of the
earth.  Unfortunately, this still works out to 822.6 visits per second.  So,
for each Christian household, Santa has just over a thousandth of a second to
land, hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings,
distribute the rest of the presents around the tree, eat whatever snacks have
been left out, get back up the chimney, climb back into his sleigh, and fly to
the next house.

     How fast is Santa moving?  Assuming all 91.8 million stops are spread
evenly over the earth's landmass, Santa must travel 0.79 miles per household -
a total trip of 72,522,000 miles. (This is a conservative estimate.  It doesn't
include trips across oceans, feeding stops for the reindeer, etc.) Given the
31-hour time period, Santa's sleigh must maintain an average speed of 650 miles
per second, or more than 3,000 times the speed of sound.  To give you an idea
of how fast that is, the fastest man-made vehicle ever built, the Ulysses space
probe, travels at a relatively pokey pace of 27.4 miles per second, and
conventional, land-bound reindeer travel at a top speed of 15 miles per hour.
But let's just assume that Santa's flying reindeer are somehow able to reach
hypersonic speeds - thanks, say, to the magic of Christmas giving.

     Let's take a closer look at Santa's vehicle.  First of all, assuming a
cheapo 2 pounds of presents per child (that's like one crummy Lego set),
the sleigh must still be able to carry a load of 321,300 tons - plus
Santa, an overweight man.  On land, a reindeer can't pull more than 300
pounds of freight, and even assuming that flying reindeer could pull ten
times that amount, Santa's massive sleigh has to be drawn by 214,200
beasts.  They increase the weight of the overall Santa payload to 353,430
tons (not including the weight of the sleigh itself).  This is more than
four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner.  Imagine: Santa
skimming over rooftops in a gargantuan hypersonic aircraft with even less
maneuverability than a Big Wheel.

     Here's where things get fun.  Three hundred fifty-three thousand tons
of reindeer and presents are going to create an enormous amount of air
resistance - especially at 650 miles per second.  This air resistance will
heat the reindeer in the same way that spaceships are heated up when they
reenter the earth's atmosphere.  According to our calculations, the lead
pair of reindeer will absord 14.3-quintillion joules of energy per second
each.  This means they will burst into spectacular, multicolored flames
almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them.  As Santa
continues on his mission - leaving deafining sonic booms in his wake -
charred reindeer will constantly be sloughed off.  All 214,200 reindeer
will be dead within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

     As for Santa, he will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06
times greater than gravity.  A 250-pound Santa would be pinned to the back
of his sleigh by 4,375,015 pounds of force (after we deduct his weight).
This force will kill Santa instantly, crushing his bones, pulverising his
flesh, turning him into pink goo.  In other words, if Santa tries to
deliver presents on Christmas Eve to every qualified boy and girl on the
face of the earth, he will be liquified.  Even if he exists, he's already
dead.

     So where DO the presents come from?  Weirdly kindhearted intruders?
Stupid robbers?  Magic?  Your parents, maybe?

     We won't insult your intelligence with the answer.