Christmas myths and mince pies

There are many strange myths and traditions relating to Christmas, some of which I have written about before (see below). The most special Christmas myths are the personal ones we create in our own families, and in particular the weird and wonderful things our children say and do. My sons are now adults, but over the years they have come out with their own share of Christmas gems…

Probably our first Christmas story was when our youngest was coming up for three years old. He was utterly charmed by a dancing musical Christmas tree at his nursery, so much so that the staff were still bringing it out for him to dance along to at Easter! The following year when my eldest was five and his brother almost four years old, we took them to Lapland to visit Santa in his home. When Santa asked what they would like for Christmas, they said they still wanted the same things they mentioned when he visited their school the previous week! Poor Lapland Santa was rather taken aback by this comment!

Roll forward a few years and my eldest informed me that he would like an iPad for Christmas. This wasn’t on the cards, so I explained that Santa’s elves only know how to make traditional toys. After pondering this for a few minutes, he said that he wasn’t sure that he believed in Father Christmas any more. Thinking fast, I said that of course Santa exists, along with the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. My son thought again for a moment and said that he didn’t really believe in the Tooth Fairy and thought it was just me and his father swapping his teeth for money. I gave him a look that said “are you on glue” and asked why on earth he thought his father and I would want to swap his manky old teeth for money?!  After another bout of thinking, he decided that this was a very fair point, and that on balance the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny and Santa did exist after all! Phew!

For many years our family Christmas was on Boxing Day. My sons were choristers which meant singing all the Christmas services. They used to get a couple of days off around 20 December and then be back in school for some final carol services, and then Midnight Eucharist, Christmas Morning Eucharist and Evensong on Christmas Day. Christmas lunch was in the school, which had only been instituted a few years before we joined – before that parents had to fend for themselves between Eucharist and Evensong, often eating sandwiches in their cars.

The school holidays officially began around 4:30pm on Christmas Day. We told the boys that Father Christmas knew all about choristers and they actually made his life a bit easier on Christmas Eve as he could bring their presents the next night. And that’s what we did – held our Christmas the day after everyone else!

Like most people we would leave a carrot for Rudolf and a mince pie and measure of brandy for Father Christmas. This is a tradition many people have, but few consider the impact on Santa, or his reindeer for that matter. Each mince pie contains around 290 calories. There are 2.2 billion households in the world, of which about a quarter contain children, and 31% are Christian (assuming people of non-Christian heritage do not expect a visit from Father Christmas), so Santa visits around 170 million homes.

This means on Christmas Eve, Father Christmas consumes 49 billion calories. Mince pies weigh about 54g each so that equates to over 9 million kilos of additional weight the poor reindeer have to pull as the Christmas Eve dash round the world progresses. A carrot in each household is unlikely to provide sufficient sustenance for all of this work!

In fact, researchers at Manchester University calculated that in order to pull Santa and his present-loaded sleigh around the world on Christmas Eve, his reindeer would need to consume 7.5 billion billion carrots, pointing out that growing this many carrots in the Lappish climate could prove to be a major challenge. Carrots are not a very calorie-dense food – the job could be made easier if Santa shared the mince pies with his reindeer, although I have no idea if reindeer enjoy mince pies or not.

Were Father Christmas to eat all the mince pies himself, he would be at risk of major indigestion. To visit the 170 million households on Christmas Eve, he has about 33 hours as a result of different time zones and the rotation of the Earth. That’s over 1,400 visits per second! Even the most committed glutton would struggle to eat 1,400 mince pies per second. For 33 hours straight!

According to NORAD, which tracks Santa on Christmas Eve, his route varies from year to year. It’s estimated that he travels 160,000,000 km delivering presents to children, which, if he takes 33 hours, means he travels at speeds exceeding 4.8 million km/h or 1.33 x10⁶ m/s which is much slower than the speed of light which is 3 x 10⁸ m/s, but still extremely fast. His true speed would be higher because this does not account for the time taken to deliver presents and eat all of those mince pies!

Of course, Father Christmas might have some tricks up his sleeve. He may have access to wormholes which could cut his travel time considerably, or quantum tunnelling which would allow him to move through rather than round the Earth. He could also be taking advantage of quantum superimposition which would allow him to be in many places at the same time. This would be extremely handy, but it would be vital that he remained unseen, otherwise the waveform would collapse and he could only be in one state / location, like Schrödinger’s Cat. These tricks would imply that Santa exists in the quantum world, which might make the consumption of all of those mince pies a challenge!

So when you tuck into your Christmas mince pies, spare a thought for Santa and his poor reindeer. Just remember to never, ever cut them with a knife as this would bring bad luck…