2) There are 2 billion children (persons under age 16) in the world, BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say: That for each Christian Household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the 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 onto the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the Earth (which of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are talking about 78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, at maximum 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on 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 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who in invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that ‘flying reindeer’ (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even including the weight of the sleigh to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison, this is four times the weight of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates an enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the Earths atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second, EACH. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa, which seems ludicrously slim, would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

Nonetheless: I am sure that everyone is still expecting to find their stockings filled come December 25 !!!

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