I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 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 (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second — 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them — Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates enormous air resistance — this would heat up the reindeer 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 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now. Happy Christmas.

In a small southern town there was a “Nativity Scene” that showed great skill and talent had gone into creating it. One small feature bothered me. The three wise men were wearing firemen’s helmets.

Totally unable to come up with a reason or explanation, I left. At a “Quik Stop” on the edge of town, I asked the lady behind the counter about the helmets. She exploded into a rage, yelling at me, “You darn Yankees never do read the Bible!”

I assured her that I did, but simply couldn’t recall anything about firemen in the Bible. She jerked her Bible from behind the counter and ruffled thru some pages, and finally jabbed her finger at a passage. Sticking it in my face she said “See, it says right here, ‘The three wise man came from afar”

A young boy, about eight years old, was at the corner “Mom & Pop” grocery picking out a pretty good size box of laundry detergent. The grocer walked over, and, trying to be friendly, asked the boy if he had a lot of laundry to do.

“Oh, no laundry,” the boy said, “I’m going to wash my dog.”

“But you shouldn’t use this to wash your dog. It’s very powerful and if you wash your dog in this, he’ll get sick. In fact, it might even kill him.”

But the boy was not to be stopped and carried the detergent to the counter and paid for it, even as the grocer still tried to talk him out of washing his dog.

About a week later the boy was back in the store to buy some candy. The grocer asked the boy how his dog was doing.

“Oh, he died,” the boy said.

The grocer, trying not to be an I-told-you-so, said he was sorry the dog died but added, “I tried to tell you not to use that detergent on your dog.”

“Well, the boy replied, “I don’t think it was the detergent that killed him.”

“Oh? What was it then?”

“I think it was the rinse cycle!”

Dr. ( ) is my professor I shall not pass.

He maketh me to exhibit mine ignorance before the whole class. He telleth me more than I can write. He lowreth mine grades.

Yea, though I walk through the corridors of knowledge, I do not learn. He tryeth to teach me. He writeth equations before me in hopes that I will understand them. He bombardeth my head with integrations.

My calculator freezeth up. Surely enthalpies and entropies shall follow me all the days of my life, And I shall dwell in the School of Engineering forever.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and Santa’s a wreck… How to live in a world that’s politically correct? His workers no longer would answer to “Elves”. “Vertically Challenged” they were calling themselves.

And labor conditions at the north pole Were alleged by the union to stifle the soul. Four reindeer had vanished, without much propriety, Released to the wilds by the Humane Society. And Equal Employment had made it quite clear that Santa had better not use just reindeer.

So Dancer and Donner, Comet and Cupid, Were replaced with 4 pigs, and you know that looked stupid| The runners had been removed from his sleigh; the ruts were termed dangerous by the OSH, eh! and people had started to call for the cops when they heard sled noises on their roof-tops.

Passive smoke from his pipe had his workers quite frightened. His fur trimmed red suit was called “Unenlightened.” and to show you the strangeness of life’s ebbs and flows, Rudolf was suing over unauthorized use of his nose and had gone on Geraldo, in front of the nation, demanding millions in over-due compensation.

So, half of the reindeer were gone; and his wife, who suddenly said she’d enough of this life, joined a self-help group, packed, and left in a whiz, demanding from now on her title was Ms. and as for the gifts, why, he’d ne’er had a notion that making a choice could cause so much commotion.

Nothing of leather, wood, plastic, or fur, which meant nothing for him and nothing for her. Nothing that might be construed to pollute. Nothing to aim. Nothing to shoot. Nothing that clamored or made lots of noise. Nothing for just girls or just for the boys.

Nothing that claimed to be gender specific. Nothing that’s warlike or non-Asian Pacific. No candy or sweets…they were bad for the tooth. Nothing that seemed to embellish a truth, and fairy tales, while not yet forbidden, were like Ken and Barbie, better off hidden.

For they raised the hackles of those pathological who claimed the only good gift was one ecological. No baseball, no football…someone could get hurt; besides, playing sports exposed kids to dirt. Dolls were said to be sexist and should be passe; and Nintendo would rot your entire brain away.

So Santa just stood there, disheveled, perplexed; he just could not figure out what to do next. He tried to be merry, tried to be gay, but you’ve got to be careful with that word today. His sack was quite empty, limp to the ground; nothing fully acceptable was to be found.

Something special was needed, a gift that he might give to all without angering the left or the right. A gift that would satisfy, with no indecision, each group of people, every religion; every ethnicity, every hue, everyone, everywhere, yes….even you!

So here is that gift, it’s price beyond worth… “May you and your loved ones enjoy peace on earth.”