Is There a Santa Claus?

[mechanic]

Not every one experiences life the same way .. That's the problem I see.  You were lied to and have no problem with it.   I was lied to and do have a problem with it.  It did not add any magic to my childhood that overcame the lie.    Maybe you got more magic than me.?

Perhaps. I don't actualy remember a time when I truly did believe in father christmas I just remember finding proof. But that is beside the point I think.

Let he who has never lied once in his whole life cast the first stone on his parents for lying about santa.

[grizz441]

Written like a man who has no children.

Maybe I will see it differently once I have kids and have the opportunity to trick them into believing a fairy tale.

[Dace]

Ill get this thread locked im sure  but here goes...


Written like a man that lies to his children.

Yes sir, we've told my son there is a Santa, and I believe he's well adjusted enough to not give a crap whether we "lied" to him or not. Like I said, he just wants the toys.

I think you said it best FireDrgn, it's all about life experience. I'm not mad at my Mommy and Daddy for for the whole Santa thing because it's a positive memory filled with that magic batfink spoke of. I just want my kids to get the same.

[FireDrgn]

Perhaps. I don't actualy remember a time when I truly did believe in father christmas I just remember finding proof. But that is beside the point I think.

Let he who has never lied once in his whole life cast the first stone on his parents for lying about santa.

but you would only lie to me about santa right.  I can believe you about other stuff right?

[Tupac]

When I was 10 I ductaped the fireplace closed so no pedophiles could perform a breaking and entry.

I was a little weird, but I'm normal now. <evil laugh> 

[FireDrgn]

I saw the other perspective growing up.  My dad dressed up as Santa every year and gave out presents.  I saw the smiles.   Even as a young child I remember thinking what the heck do we need Santa for.    

I guess it was a way to give the poor kids presents without any embarrassment.  We never went to the rich kids houses to hand out presents.   Touchy subject I guess.

[redwing7]

I feel sorry for some of the posters in this thread, and the fact that they don't understand why I feel sorry for them is the very reason I do.....

[Sonicblu]

I wasn't upset as much about the lie as I was about the fact that my oldest brother knew that is wasn't true and never told me.
I felt betrayed. but what is a 7 year old brother supposed to do when parents tell him to keep lying.

Penguin said it best.


I will remove myself from the group that lies when I know what the truth is. I can create way more magic by teaching the truth to my kids and giving the skill to reason beyond some feel good lie.

This is where we are supposed to all go watch how the grinch stole xmas to feel better.

[Belial]

My nephew is 4 and I showed him my video of me shooting santa over a7 this year....santa then augured and dissapeared so i said i shot santa....he said shoot him again lmao...



But I told him santa was fine and just switched countries....

[bj229r]

Gawd what a buncha....can't say that word. No wonder our country is so messed up, buncha mamby pamby adult jackwagons pining away over the horrible injustice of Santa Claus foisted upon them as children.....tissue?

[Dace]

 

[mechanic]

but you would only lie to me about santa right.  I can believe you about other stuff right?

I know what you're saying, learning our parents are only human is part of growing up and humans can't be trusted, any of them.

Specific cases like Grizz talks about are probably rare. The act of actualy faking the cookie and poop may be a step too far and an example of parents trying to keep up the act when the child is trying to grow up and is old enough to feel cheated by the deception. (Forgive me grizz for the assumptions, just looking at what you presented.) I understand your grievence with the methods you parents took to lie to you is more the issue than 'telling kids fairy tales' in general.

[Denholm]

Reading this reminded me of the engineer's perspective of Santa:

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world.


However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the population reference bureau).


At an average (census) rate of 3.5   children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.


This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child,Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney,jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.


Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.


This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second -- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.


The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized LEGO set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself.  On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them -- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).


600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.


Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 mps in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.


Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas!

[guncrasher]

I found out there was no santa, when i got no presents on xmas as a kid.  I perhaps got presents 2 or 3 times when I was growing up.  xmas however was magical for us, grandma making cookies, nothing compares waking up to the smell of them.  I would wake up every 25th to see if I got a present and there was none.  but every xmas morning I had some nice chocolate and plenty of home made bread and cookies.  xmas presents mean nothing to me, I mean seriously, I will buy my kids (now in their 20's) presents, but I expect none and normally get none.  but what I love is them coming over and me cooking dinner and we sit around and shoot the breeze like always.  that's worth more to me than any present i may get.

xmas is such a commercialized thing now a days, that most people forget that it's not santa or presents that makes xmas, but family.

merry xmas guys,

semp

[FireDrgn]

Gawd what a buncha....can't say that word. No wonder our country is so messed up, buncha mamby pamby adult jackwagons pining away over the horrible injustice of Santa Claus foisted upon them as children.....tissue?

You watching Geico commercials again?    Our country is messed up because a few people wont lie about  Santa Clause.     Certianly  we are not the majority. How can the we be the reason the Country is so messed up?


You realize  that its some stranger that tells your kid the truth  right??????     If that dont tug at your  heart strings  whats the point.