You’ve always had your doubts about the Santa story, but lacked convincing proof that he’s a myth? Here’s the dirty on the Christmas charlatan.

First, no known species of reindeer can fly. There are an estimated 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, the possibility of the existence of flying reindeer which only Santa has seen is not completely ruled out.

Second, there are over two billion children living today. However, since Santa does not appear to look after the needs of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist or humanist children, his workload is reduced to 15 per cent of the total or 378 million children. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes that there is at least one good child in each.

Third, Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due to the different time zones and the rotation speed of the earth, assuming that he travels east to west, which seems logical. At 91.8 million homes, this works out to 822.6 visits per second.

So for each Christian household with at least one good child, Santa has 0.001 seconds to park, hop out of his 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 for the purposes of our calculation we will accept), we are talking about 0.78 miles per household, or a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc.

So Santa’s sleigh must be moving at a speed of 650 miles per second, or roughly 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purpose of comparison, the fastest human-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. And, for the record, a conventional reindeer can run at most 15 miles per hour.

Fourth, the payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element to our calculations. Assuming that each child gets no more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 lb), the sleigh must carry 321,300 tons of presents, not counting Santa – who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 lb.

Even granting that ‘flying’ reindeer could pull ten times the normal weight, we would still need 214,200 of them! This in turn increases the payload – not counting the weight of the sleigh – to 354,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean liner QEII. And where do the bodily wastes of 214,200 flying reindeer go?

Finally, a mass of 353,400 tons travelling at 650 miles per second would create enormous air resistance. The reindeer would heat up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering 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 instantaneous flame, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.

In fact, the entire team of 214,200 reindeer would be vaporised within 0.00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than the force of gravity. A 250-pound Santa (and this seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

If Santa ever delivered presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.

[Courtesy Weltanschauung Vol 2 No 4, 1995]