A Celebration of Jack Bean & Charles
Claus?
Believe it or not, I have actually gotten into trouble in some churches when angry parents have called the pastor to complain that I told the children that there was no Santa Claus. Mind you, it’s not that I specifically set out to prick the lie that these parents had been telling their kids – it was just part of the general statements I made regarding the “truth” of evolution (…“it’s like believing in
Santa Claus”, I’d say). Well, just so I don’t offend any other parents who don’t mind their kids actually believing a lie for a few years, I’ve switched to Jack (of beanstalk fame). It doesn’t seem to offend too many parents to poke fun at the guy who plants magic beans. I guess that’s a lot more ridiculous than a fat elf coming down your chimney.
So, I got to thinking about this whole evolution issue in a
“Santa” sort of way. You see, Darwinian evolution is taught as though it’s an actual fact, in spite of the mountains of scientific impossibilities it has to overcome. Our ministry spends many hours teaching people about this. So, at this time of year, how about if we give the fairy tale of evolution a break, and zero in on the fairy tale of the jolly old elf.
I’ve no idea who wrote the original, but what
follows now is a brief treatise (I’ve modified and added to it) on why we really shouldn’t believe in Santa. The story is just too impossible to believe any more, given the weight of all the evidence. It’s just that…. I mean……well, you decide!
We will start, as does the theory of evolution, with many assumptions. These will include, but not be limited to, the following: 1) that there is, in fact, a Santa, 2)
that he somehow has eluded the aging process, 3) that he and his helpers somehow survive at the North Pole, 4) that a huge variety of raw materials for gift-making are readily available, 5) that a certain species of reindeer can fly, and 6) that he knows who’s been good and bad. We must also look the other way when imagining how a heavy elf comes down all those skinny chimneys – especially when most houses don’t even have a chimney!
There are approximately two billion children (people under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Hindu, Muslim, 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 rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108,000,000 homes, presuming, of course, that there is at least one child in each house who has been
good.
Santa has about
31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different times 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 about 1/1,000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, grab the appropriate toys, slide down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever
snacks have been left for him, do his nose thing to get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of this calculation), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household – a total trip of about 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or
breaks. This means that 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 pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can normally run at 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-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500,000 tons – not counting Santa himself! On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granted that the flying reindeer variety could pull ten times that amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them (if you add the one with the red nose). Santa would need 360,000 reindeer! This increases the total load (not counting the weight of the sleigh) by another 54,000
tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer 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 flames
instantaneously, thereby 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 (4.26/1,000), or right about the same 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 miles per second, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250-pound Santa (which seems 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 blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa ever did exist, he’s dead now! □
Original document author
unkown
