Doubting Santa’s Existence?

It is astonishing that some people still doubt the existence of Santa Claus. Despite the vast amount of photographic evidence, the hundreds of annual reports on Father Christmas’s activities from perfectly reputable news sources, and the bulging stockings full of presents that reliably appear on Christmas morning, somehow the doubters remain unconvinced. Thankfully mathematics can help. The conspiracy theorists have already tried turning to science to demonstrate their (clearly incorrect) position.

They calculate that if Santa were to visit the 1.9 billion children in the world,* he would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound while carrying more than 300,000 tons of presents (about the weight of six Titanics). Richard Dawkins, king of the skeptics, has insisted that the lack of any noticeable sonic booms from all that zipping about at supersonic speeds is more than enough evidence that Santa cannot possibly be real.

Worse still, some claim that this astonishing weight of parcels travelling at such a remarkable speed would practically vaporize the leading reindeer, who would have to withstand the full hit of air resistance. Meanwhile, sitting in the back of his sleigh, Santa would be subjected to forces tens of thousands of times stronger than gravity, making it impossible for him to breathe or to retain any of the physical structure of his bones or internal organs, thus reducing him to a liquefied mess.