Mr S. Claus – the conspiracy theories (Christmas in General)

Member Name: Rumblefish

Product:	Christmas in General
Date:	08/12/00 (40 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Such a nice man...

Disadvantages: ...or is he....?

Santa Claus, Father Christmas, St.Nick, call him what you like, but this mysterious character with a white beard and limited dress sense is a symbol of the festive season for every citizen of the western world, and a very real human being to millions of children.

My own belief in Santa was extinguished the Christmas Eve night I awoke to find my parents laying out my presents. He lived on by means of some awful playground jokes (Q: What goes “ho ho ho, swoosh; ho ho ho, swoosh”? A: Santa Claus caught in a revolving door.), and even now as £5-per-hour seasonal workers in toyshops and department stores.

But who is this man anyway, and could he really exist? If so, what are his methods and his motives? Is he truly a force for good, or something more sinister?

Firstly, could Santa, in his traditional and popular incarnation really be coming to a chimney near you this Christmas? A great deal of research has been put into this eternal question in recent years, and the answer is almost certainly “no”.

Even allowing for the many millions of children that Santa does not visit (Muslims, Buddhists etc, not to mention naughty little boys and girls), he still has to make it to, at a conservative calculation, around 100 million homes. Even allowing for different time zones across the globe that give him 31 hours to work with, Santa must therefore visit around 850 homes per second, giving him around 1/1000 of a second to park his sleigh, get down the chimney, fill all available stockings, eat and drink whatever comestibles are left out for him, get back up the chimney, get in his sleigh, and make it to the next house. Even assuming Santa was a very quick worker, his sleigh would have to travel at around 3000 times the speed of sound. There is also the small (or rather large) matter of Santa’s payload. Assuming he was to carry a medium sized present (the oft-used example is a two-pound lego set) for each child, his sl
eigh would have to carry 330,000 tons of presents. Even should he have a sleigh of appropriate size and sturdiness, how would it get around? Conventional reindeer - though of course flying reindeer remain an unclassified species - can pull only around 300 pounds, meaning the sleigh would need around 220,000 reindeer (219,992 more than is popularly believed). Reindeer in tow, such weight travelling at such speed would create such enormous air resistance that Blitzen, Dancer, Prancer and the rest would be vaporized instantly, and create centrifugal forces, 17,500 times greater than gravity, that would splatter Santa into the back of his sleigh.

Alas, Santa, as we would like to know him, does not exist. But that not mean that he does not exist per se. There ARE theories that could substantiate his existence…

1) SANTA THE TIME TRAVELLER: One explanation for the seeming impossibility of Santa’s activities is that he is a time traveller. If so, he would of course have unlimited time to deliver presents, travelling back and forth through time with each delivery to effectively make all deliveries simultaneous. If his sleigh were indeed a time-skipping or time-stopping device (and it does bear a cursory similarity to the time machine as described by H G Wells), why would he use it? Well if time travel is indeed ever discovered, Santa could be a benevolent being sent from a Utopian future to brighten and enlighten these all too sombre times.

2) SANTA THE ALIEN: Whilst Santa operates beyond the realm of known human abilities his activities could be straightforward to a highly advanced alien species. That his large-scale toy-making factories and workforce remain undiscovered, even with Lapland and the North Pole having been fairly comprehensively mapped and explored, suggest an Area 51-like cover-up. Perhaps presents are in fact part of some off-world replication process by extraterrestrial beings. With luck, these are altruistic aliens, b
ut those with a cynical eye on the commercialisation and globalisation might wonder if Santa and his actions are part of some long-term alien plan to weaken and indoctrinate us, and make us more easily overcome at the time of some future invasion or colonisation. This theory also puts a sinister twist on another awful playground joke: Q: “What do you get if you cross Santa with E.T.? A: “Claus Encounters of the Third Kind”

3) SANTA THE COMMUNIST: Although the collapse of the Soviet Union has weakened this theory, there remains suspicion that Santa is in fact a creation of far-left forces seeking to overload and destroy the capitalist world in which he is active. As Christmas becomes ever more centred on the fragile market economy, Santa’s presents could be the product of communist worker collectives, whose aim is to bring the decadent western world to its knees by accelerating the eventual failure of capitalism, and thereby ushering in a communist world as foreseen by Marx. And that red coat’s a giveaway too.

4) SANTA THE CLONE: No one Santa could perform the miracle he is said to perform. But what if there were multiple Santa’s? Cloning is now scientifically proven, and top officials may be using Dolly the Sheep as a means of easing us into a world of clones, and the eventual revelation that there is a Santa sent to every street, before each is returned to the North Pole to be put “on ice” until next year. Perhaps those embarrassed men in toyshops and department stores really ARE the real thing…?

5) SANTA THE GOVERNMENT-SPONSORED TOOL OF OPPRESSION: Despite all the evidence disproving his existence, Santa lives on each Christmas apparently stronger and more influential than ever. His reach extends to yet more children and more households as each year passes, yet is he the force of good he claims to be? The economy and the establishment are increasingly reliant upon Santa Claus to bol
ster trade, and create an atmosphere of so-called “Christmas cheer” that sends us all scurrying around shops in search of those presents Santa doesn’t deliver, while governments sit back and watch with glee. Each Christmas we try to convince our children of Santa’s existence, even though he spends each year sat on his fat arse while we are left out-of-pocket doing his job for him. No wonder he laughs so much.

So many questions remain unanswered. But should you see a jolly white-bearded man in a red suit this Christmas, beware! He may not be all that he seems…

* Thanks to Spy magazine and scifi.com for some of the above information.

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