saint nick has the heart of gold
[ Begin tape - 09:29 R 08 Nov 2007 ]
I never post anymore... You'd think I'd be coming back to say something serious. Instead, I'm revealing an insight into the physics of holiday mythology.
I once read an article trying to guess the numbers that would be associated with an actual attempt to deposit sacks of gifts in every chimney around the world between midnight and sunrise. It took into account that the entity making the attempt (let's call him "Santa") would have 24 hours to complete the journey, but would be limited to an average of only one hour in each timezone. I forget the numbers for houses per time zone, time allowed at each house, or whatever, but suffice it to say that a linear approach would require speeds several thousand times the speed of light, even allowing a handful of microseconds at each house.
Draw what conclusions you will, but I found myself thinking about this puzzle when I awoke this morning, and I must have been channelling Douglas Adams, because I had seen the problem in a completely different way. Santa has already figured out how to make reindeer fly, and is already harboring elves who can reverse engineer and reproduce arbitrary toys, so let's just grant him some unspecified level of fictional technology. Given that, it seems more likely that Santa employs some kind of quantum probability expansion device, such that he visits all the houses in a given time zone at the same time. This gives him an hour in each location to get into the house, arrange all the gifts, grab some refreshments, and make his escape.
The beauty of this theory is that, in true scientific fashion, it explains parts of the Santa Claus mythos that we previously just took for granted. The reason it's so critical that we go to sleep before Santa arrives, and that he doesn't visit the houses of anyone who is marked as "naughty", is that he doesn't want to risk collapsing the quantum phenomenon that makes it all possible. Imagine if some brat snuck out into the living room and observed a possible Santa instance dropping off gifts. Santa's probability envelope would instantly collapse, trapping him within the naughty child's house, and ruining the holiday for everyone. He has to stay away from the conscious and the weak-willed because he has to make sure that an observation can't trap him in a single finite location.
And that, kids, is how Santa really does it. Go tell those party-pooper parents of yours that all this "There isn't really a Santa Claus" business is a bunch of hooey; he's just got cooler toys than anyone. (Yeah, I have too much time on my hands.)
[ End tape - 10:13 R 08 Nov 2007 ]