BAH HUMBUG!

Another Christmas has come and gone.

We certainly don't believe any children are reading this website, are they now? They've already sprung from the beds four mornings ago and whipped their way to the Christmas tree to open their presents. Imagine when every child does that, what the amount of paper wasted might be?

On Christmas Eve night, we followed Santa Claus' path on Norad.Tracking.Santa and we waited and we waited and we waited ... we actually believed we heard some hoof prints on our roof, with a fat man dressed in a red suit looking for a chimney. And finding none, he took off and flew away ... "Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder and Blitzen!", and of course, poor Rudolph.

I know it's true ... I read about it on the Internet!

If there really was a Santa Claus, do you think we would be able to logically explain a few things to our children? Perhaps, this website is a start ...

There are six billion people in the world, and the population is growing larger and larger each day. The number of young children is much higher in developing countries, where we see all those commercials with kids with fat bellies and flies in their hair and a voice-over telling us to give, give, give ... until it hurts. At least a third of the world's population are children.

That means Santa Claus has to consider at least two billion children to find gifts for and to deliver them personally to each and every child. He only has one night in which to do it. Being generous, give him 24 hours, as the earth turns it becomes dark at some point every twenty-four hours.

So we watched Santa right from the very beginning, except it was very difficult to see him, as the sack full of toys was so huge that it can fit several small planets inside, let alone toys ... and stored atop a sleigh driven by eight magical reindeer led by a baby one with a shiny nose.

Those reindeer must have been working out! Hup-two, hup-two, hup-two!!! It certainly isn't Santa himself, as he always looks as though he can lose a few pounds.

And the sleigh travels at such speed. Imagine how many houses must contain those two billion plus children. Let us be conservative and say there are two children per household, and therefore, one billion homes have to be visited within twenty-four hours to stop on the rooftop, slide down the chimney and dump all of those toys under the trees within ... and don't forget, many homes leave milk and cookies for Santa Claus as well.

At the rate he must travel to get all his work done, he will certainly need them; however, he must inhale awfully fast, because at a rate of 0.0000864 second per house he must travel. That doesn't leave much time to stop, take a breather, slip down a chimney, taking all the toys that belong to that house and dropping them off under the trees within ...

That is assuming all the houses have a tree to put the toys under, or have a chimney to climb down, or even have kids in them ... we can always dream, can we?

Let us assume this is even possible under the laws of physics. As a conservative estimate, even if Santa just gives one toy to each child, which we KNOW this is not true, because in TV commercials and the movies, there are usually many gifts under the tree for each child. Now that has to be true! Because we saw it on TV!!!

Anyways, let us assume the weight of each gift would be between 3 - 10 pounds on average. Given the conservative estimate of one gift per child, we are looking at an average weight of 6.5 pounds X 2 billion gifts, which adds up to 13 billion pounds. That is a lot of weight to bear, even for the most toughest structures built to withstand California earthquakes!

Can you imagine an object of that weight and size landing on your roof, even for a millionth of a second and not expecting anything to happen to your house?

What about those houses that don't have chimneys? What about children that live in apartment buildings? Does Santa somehow crawl through the duct work? How about those mud shacks that many children in the developing world live in? Of course, Santa has to go to those houses too, because he is not prejudiced, nor picky on nationality, religion, or silly things like that.

Don't forget that Santa also must remember the names of all those two billion children and where they live at all times, and precisely where they will be staying on Christmas Eve night. What about children that end up in homeless shelters, orphanages, juvenile detention centres, hospitals or other ill begotten locations? Yes, if you truly believe in Santa, he will stop by these places too ...

It must take Santa at least a year to remember all the names, addresses and specific preferences of each child. He would have to order parts, direct his elves to make the requisite toys to be delivered and supervise his staff to manufacture these toys, as well as issue quality control, e-test whenever required, etc. That is an amazing amount of work in itself!

Hold on, hold on ... who exactly PAYS for all the raw materials, the machinery, the elves, and the fuel whatever it is, that gets Santa from here, there and everywhere? It has to be the taxpayers, right? The same people who pay Superman, Batman, Spiderman, and all those other super-heroes that save our day, right? You can't imagine this is ALL volunteer work, do you?

Like, who would VOLUNTARILY dress up in a red suit, jump in a sleigh, and say, "Ho ho ho", and fly all over the world, while people like me point at them and laugh at their antics? I would wonder if Santa has a real job, like the rest of us do ... or does he do this full-time?

Santa does have his admirers though. Hundreds of thousands of imitators work the malls year after year after year, trying to fool the children into thinking they just might be the REAL Santa Claus. Santa stars in movies, even many cartoons. He is famous.

Yet he has the same complex that the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and the Groundhog have in common: That is a complex where they feel they are being ignored, that they do not really exist, apart from people's imaginations and the odd television commercial or two at this time of the year.

Perhaps, the American Psychiatric Association should be consulted for their next version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, as to what the name of this particular malady might be. Or what the name of the disorder might be for those that want to imitate or pretend to be Santa Claus, even if he does not actually exist.

The only way to prove he exists is to contact agencies like the Internal Revenue Agency, Canada Revenue Agency, or any other similar taxation department, including prying it out of those Swiss Bankers, to see if anybody by the name of Santa Claus has declared an income at all this year, last year, the year before that, etc., and if so, where that income came from.

I could only guess it is the same income that funds the Post Office, the military, the police and fire departments. You and me taxpayer. You can't imagine somebody wanting to PAY Santa Claus for doing these ridiculous feats year after year after year, do you? It has to be the taxpayers!

What about checking lists, to see who is naughty or nice? Do such lists exist? One might argue they do. We have "no fly" lists, CSIS has "files" on various Canadians, and the Bilderberg group meets periodically to discuss certain "citizens". It is just as easy to stretch this to believe there are such naughty and nice lists ... how do people get on either list? Is there a phone number to call to report somebody, or send best wishes for? Or are these "lists" created in the same way that God determines who goes to Heaven and who goes to Hell? Meaning, there is no number to call, but he just "knows".

There has to be a number of people on the naughty list, because there are specialized coal dealers in the world. Where else would Santa find lumps of coal to hand out to all of these "naughty" people? One place that comes to mind is Cole's: The Coal People. They have a few branches here in the city, so there must be a LOT of naughty people running about.

One also wonders what makes a reindeer fly. If any of you seen the way our cats can get at night time, you would probably be close, and figure that the reindeer are simply eating what our cats are eating ... on steroids.

Do you still believe in Santa Claus? If you do, you probably had a bit too much jolly with your eggnog this year. Merry belated Christmas, folks and have a fantastic and comical New Year! This one is on the house, for sure ...