A SCIENTIST LOOKS AT SANTA
Luk 2:10-14 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. (11) For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. (12) And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. (13) And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, (14) Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
The following is an article I came across several years ago. I find it pretty amusing and hope you will, also. It is entitled "A Scientist looks at Santa" by scientist L. Harold Allen.
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are about 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which only Santa has ever seen.
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18 years of age) in the world. Since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, and Buddhist children, that reduces his workload to 15% of the total - 378 million children, according to the Population Reference Bureau. The census shows an average of 3.5 children per household. That's 91.8 million homes to be visited. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming that he would be logical in traveling from east to west. 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 within which he has 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 then move on to 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 purpose of our calculations we will accept it), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, which is 3,000 times the speed of sound.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set, weighing about two pounds, the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" could pull 10 times that of a normal reindeer, we can not do the job with eight, or even nine reindeer. We need 214,200 reindeer! This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons.
353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. Each of the lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy, per second! In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing each reindeer behind them in turn, thus creating a series of 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 earth's gravity. A 250-pound Santa would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion, if Santa ever did try to deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now! So, Santa could not be "the reason for the season".
And, as you may know, Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners by dying for their sins on the cross, not His own. So, if you will admit to being a sinner and turn from your sins and turn to Christ for forgiveness of sin and eternal life, and trust Christ only, the Bible says you will be saved. Then, each year when you celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, you can also celebrate your new birth in Christ. You will then fully understand why Jesus, not Santa, is the reason for the season.
Merry Christmas and may God richly bless you as you follow Him.
