Advent

[zamboe]

Advent is the name that the catholic calendar gives to the previous month before Christmas.

[SurlyPIG]

Did you know that the modern-day persona of Santa Claus (as in fat guy on a sleigh with reindeer, sack of toys, wearing red and puffy white) was actually created by Coca Cola?

[Khan]

huh I thought thats what St Nick has always been, jolly and that knida goes with the image of the big fat guy

[Acriku]

So it's all of Coca Cola's fault...Oh well they make good drinks. :D

[zamboe]

About all that christmas gifts, on Dec,25. In some countries in South America the "gift day" is on Jan,06 the "day of the wizard Kings", on Dec,25 there is only a familiy dinner, that usually people make outside the houses, taking advantage of the summer.

[nemafakei]

Children in some parts of Europe receive presents not from a fat man who commits breaking and entering thousands of times a year (and deposits suspicious packages), but from the thre kings, on 6 Jan also.

I don't mind having a meal with my family, sending round gifts etc, but to start celebrating almost a month in advance is unneccesary.

And yes, Christmas has been overcommercialised.

[Edric O]

Children in some parts of Europe receive presents not from a fat man who commits breaking and entering thousands of times a year (and deposits suspicious packages)

And uses a possibly stolen getaway vehicle with no licence plate. :)

[nemafakei]

And forces animals to do what they are obviously incapable of. And uses child labour (he calls them elves).

[Anathema]

I found a Dutch site wich was pretty funny. "Does Santa Claus really exist" I'll translate a bit of it.

Santa Claus has 31 hours time due to the different timezones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he works from east to west (seems logical). This are 3.48 million houses per hour, or 968 houses per second. This means that per christian household with good children he has 1.033 miliseconds the time to park, jump off the sledge, plant the presents under the tree, climb out of the chimney, start the sledge up agian and procede to the next house. IF we assume that these households are scattered across the world equally (wich woud not be true, but for the sake of the calculations we assume so) we are talking about 1.3 kilometres between 2 households, and a total trip of 140.4 million kilometres. That means that Santas sledge travels with a speed of 1258.1 kilometres per second: 4,194 times the speed of sound. Comparison: the fastest verhicle ever, the spaceprobe Ulysses, only reaches 46 kilometres per second. A standard rendier (forgive spelling) wouldn't reach more then 60 kilometres per hour.

[Edric O]

He obviously uses high-tech time-warping technology. I suggest we assemble a military taskforce and capture his base of operations to prevent this technology from falling into the wrong hands.

He he ;D

[Anathema]

There are 2,000,000,000 children (people beneath 18 years) across teh whole world, but because Santa (probably) skips the muslims, hindoes, jews and buddhists, the entire amount of children would be 18.9 % of the total: 378 milliion, according to reliable sources. An average of 3.5 children per household gives a total of 108 million households. We'll assume that per household there is at least one good child (this is an optimistical estimation).

Santa Claus has 31 hours time due to the different timezones and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he works from east to west (seems logical). This are 3.48 million houses per hour, or 968 houses per second. This means that per christian household with good children he has 1.033 miliseconds the time to park, jump off the sledge, plant the presents under the tree, climb out of the chimney, start the sledge up agian and procede to the next house. IF we assume that these households are scattered across the world equally (wich woud not be true, but for the sake of the calculations we assume so) we are talking about 1.3 kilometres between 2 households, and a total trip of 140.4 million kilometres. That means that Santas sledge travels with a speed of 1258.1 kilometres per second: 4,194 times the speed of sound. Comparison: the fastest verhicle ever, the spaceprobe Ulysses, only reaches 46 kilometres per second. A standard rendier (forgive spelling) wouldn't reach more then 60 kilometres per hour.

The sledges weight leads to something interesting: assuming a child receives a small box of about 1 kilogram, the sledge tows at least 108 million kilograms, of wich the weight of Santa is still ignored. On land, rendiers can't tow more then 160 kilograms. Even if a flying rendier can tow ten times as much weight as a normal one, we can't accomplish anything with 8 or 9 rendiers, we would need 675,000 (this could be the entire population, wich would explain why we never spotted one). The total weight is now 148.5 million kilograms.

148.5 million kilograms with a speed of 1258,1 kilometres per second would mean a large force of friction. The rendiers would be heated the same way as a space probe wich travels through the Earths atmosphere. The frontal 2 rendiers would abosorb an estimated amount of 14.3 billion kilojoule per second. Probably, this would make them explode and the 2 rendiers behind them would be exposed to the friction.

Also, there would be sound booms as never heard before. In 0.00426 seconds the entire team of rendiers will have exploded. In the meanwhile, Santa would be exposed to G forces equal of 17,000 times normal gravity. A 600 pound Santa Claus would be tossed into the air with a force of 443,150 newton.

Conclusion: if Santa ever delivered presents on Christmas, he's probably dead.

[ken124578]

rendier.

moose ;)

[ken124578]

lmao earthnuker :D

[Anathema]

A moose is een eland ;)

I looked it up. It's supposed to be reindeer.

[The_Sadukar]

That's a reasonable possibility.

After all, Santa Claus has nothing to do with Christian tradition, he's just a folk story. :)

I konw up here in the cold snowy(I wish) denmark, we have always celebratet jul (the danish word for christmans), we did even before we bacame christians. as far as I know, they only changed the reason for the feast. so acturly we are just celerating that it's geting lighter as we speak

[Caid Ivik]

Your writings about Santa Claus aren't actually right. That name is based on Saint Nicolaus, a bishop from Myra, who lived in 3rd century AD. He was very greed, so he became one of the symbols of the gifts. We christians celebrate his day (6th december) separately from Christmas. Also, mid-winter wasn't never celebrated, winter was a symbol of death (Morena and such...). Christmas had nothing with the winter, just on this half of world is it in december.

Giving gifts from Jesus on his birthday means, that God gave us all we have, but when we give something to another one, we are doing what he wants from us, so we are giving Him the only good he wants. It's pity all merchants are trying to have as much as they can from it. Hyenism, but it's today's world.

[Inoculator9]

I think Santa is able to get all the presents to us good boys and girls by enploying many sub-santas, administrative assistant santas, or even elves dressed up. Santa visits only one house himself, and that is where he leaves the best presents. And since I've been such a good boy Santa is coming ovrt tonight for dinner, were having reindeer.

[Anathema]

Caid the full name of Sinterklaas is Sint Nicolaas. (that is, Dutch spelling)

[Caid Ivik]

Or Svaty Mikulas in Slovak. But it's still based on one, christianic person, which was just "atheised". Those red-mantle fat men are more like soviet alternative, Ded Moroz (Grandpa Freeze or what), which had to replace Jesus in children minds. Germans call it "Weinachtsmann".