Santa Clause the Movie from sometime in the 80's was a movie I really enjoyed. I may not celebrate the holodays anymore ... but I still like Santa. (Who, bte, teams up with the Doctor coming this Christmas.)

Since it's that time of year again time to bump Santa Claus back up into the running.

Bah, humbug. If Santa is so powerful, then why did he need help from The Six Million Dollar Man's Lee Majors?

The Day The Reindeer Died.

The Movie inna Movie from Scrooged. Too bad it never got made for REAL!

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 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.

XSE Wrote:
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> V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

Christmas magic is the answer to all of your logical arguments. Have some eggnog.

That time of year again to bump Santa back into the spotlight!

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XSE
V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

In the movie the Santa Clause, it was explained that Santa and his sleigh move in a time warp of sorts that allow him to visit all these homes and drop of the presents. In addition to that, Santa Claus isn't subject to the laws of physics. I hope that explain helps.

It's that time of year once again to bring forth the illustrious Santa Claus!

But... my favorite is Krampus. Sadly, Marvel hasn't ever deigned to honor the Germanic Christmas entity in their books.

I guess he couldn't be all that tough, Brock Samson did beat the crap out of him mercilessly. On the other hand, Krampus did get up and walk away from the fight afterward as if nothing had happened.

um what would the reindeer stats be?

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uberbevan
um what would the reindeer stats be?

Wow, I'm amazed someone found and bumped this up (and bummed at realizing I neglected to around Christmas last year).

I can't believe I neglected to include the Reindeer stats, since I did Mrs. Claus and the elves. I'll have to think about what kind of stats they'd have and get back to you, unless someone else helps you out first.

If you're looking for more Christmas characters, check out the newest issue of The New Marvel-Phile - a special holiday edition! And Thrudjelmer, Krampus is included! It's in the Marvel-Phile thread.

Time to bring this bit of Christmas cheer back into the spotlight!

Frank Castle for the win. Well played, and a hearty thanks to NM for that impeccable writeup.