... Christmas

There are no known flying reindeer, but there are still more than 300,000 living organisms that haven’t been classified. Even though most of them are insects, you can’t rule out the possibility that one of these organisms is in fact a flying reindeer…

There are 2 billion kids in the world, but apparently Santa Claus doesn’t have anything to do with Hindus, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists, so his workload is reduced by about 85%. Left are 378 million kids. With an average of 3,5 kid per household that’s 91,8 million homes.

Santa Claus has, thanks to timezones and the Earth’s rotation, 31 hours to deliver presents, if he travels from East to West. That means he has to visit 822,6 houses per second. So Santa Claus has 1/1000 of a second to park the sleigh, find the right presents, crawl down the chimney, put a present in the sock or under the tree, have a cookie, back to the sleigh and on to the next house.

If we assume that the 91,8 million homes are equally placed around the world, that means 1248 kilometres per household. That’s a 120,8 million kilometres long journey and this does not include bathroom breaks and feeding the reindeer.

Santa Claus’ sleigh moves with 1040 kilometres per second, 3000 times faster than sound. For comparison a high speed rocket flies with about 43,8 kilometres per second and an average reindeer can run up to about 25 kilometres an hour.

The weight of the sleigh is also interesting. Let’s say that all kids only receive a standard pack of Lego blocks of about 1 kilogram. That would make the sleigh weigh about 353,300 tons. The weight of the actual sleigh and the always overweight Santa Claus is not included. For comparison that’s about 4 times the weight of the ship Queen Elizabeth II

So… Do you still believe in Santa Claus?


(I didn't write this, only translated it, so if any of the calculations are wrong, don't blame me )