'Twas the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual yuletide celebration, and throughout our place of residence, kinetic activity was not in evidence among the possessors of this potential, including that species of domestic rodent known as Mus Musculus. Hosiery was meticulously suspended from the forward edge of the wood-burning caloric apparatus, pursuant to our anticipatory pleasure regarding an imminent visitation from an eccentric philanthropist among whose folkloric appellations is the honorific title of St. Nicholas.

The prepubescent siblings, comfortably ensconced in their respective accommodations of repose, were experiencing various subconscious visual hallucinations of variegated fruit confections moving rhythmically through their cerebra. My conjugal partner and I, attired in our nocturnal cranial coverings, were about to take slumbrous advantage of the hibernal darkness when upon the avenaceous exterior portion of the grounds there ascended such a cacophony of dissonance that I felt compelled to arise with alacrity from my place of repose for the purpose of ascertaining the precise source thereof.

Hastening to the casement, I forthwith opened the barriers sealing the fenestration, noting thereupon that the lunar brilliance without, reflected as it was on the surface of a recent crystalline aqueous precipitation, might be said to rival that of the solar meridian itself -- thus permitting my incredulous optical sensor to peruse a miniature airborne runnered conveyance drawn by an octet of diminutive specimens of the genus Rangifer, piloted by a miniscule, aged chauffeur so ebullient and nimble that it became instantly apparent to me that he was indeed our anticipated caller. With his undulate motive power traveling at what may possibly have been more vertiginous velocity than patriotic alar predators, he vociferated loudly, expelled breath musically through contracted labia, and addressed each of the octet by his or her respective cognomen ... "Now Dasher, now Dancer..." et al. -- guiding them to the uppermost exterior level of our abode, through which structure I could readily distinguish the concatenations of each of the 32 cloven pedal extremities.

As I retracted my cranium from its erstwhile location, and was performing a 180-degree pivot, our distinguished visitant achieved -- with utmost celerity and via a downward leap -- entry by way of the smoke passage. He was clad entirely in animal pelts soiled by the ebon residue from the oxidations of carboniferous fuels which had accumulated on the walls thereof. His resemblance to a street vendor I attributed largely to the plethora of assorted playthings which he bore dorsally in a commodious cloth receptacle.

His orbs were scintillant with reflected luminosity, while his submaxillary dermal indentations gave every evidence of engaging amiability. The capillaries of his molar regions and nasal aptenance were engorged with blood which suffused the subcutaneous layers, the former approximating the coloration of Albion's floral emblem, the latter that of the Prunus avium, or sweet cherry. His amusing sub- and supra-labials resembled nothing so much as a common loop knot, and their ambient hirsuite facial adornment appeared like small, tabular and columnar crystals of frozen water.

Clenched firmly between his incisors was a smoking piece whose gray fumes, forming a tenuous ellipse about his occiput, were suggestive of a decorative seasonal circlet of holly. His visage was wider than it was high, and when he waxed audibly mirthful, his corpulent abdominal region undulated in the manner of impectinated fruit syrup in a hemispherical container.

Without utterance and with dispatch, he commenced filling the aforementioned hosiery with articles of merchandise extracted from his aforementioned previously dorsally transported cloth receptacle. Upon completion of this task, he executed an abrupt about-face, placed a single manual digit in lateral juxtaposition to his olfactory organ, inclined his cranium forward in a gesture of leave-taking, and forthwith affected his egress by renegotiating (in reverse) the smoke passage. He then propelled himself in a short vector onto his conveyance, directed a musical expulsion of air through his contracted oral sphincter to the antlered quadrupeds of burden, and proceeded to soar aloft in a movement hitherto observable chiefly among the seed-bearing portions of a common weed. But I overheard his parting exclamation, audible immediately prior to his vehiculation beyond the limits of visibility:

 

That gave me a headache!!

 

OUCH! That hurt my cranium! HA HA HA!

Happy Holidays, Tom! Regards to Elizabeth!

Clover

 

Ha... New tradation My 8 and 11 year old will love this when I read it to them on the nocturnal segment of the diurnal period preceding the annual yuletide celebration.


Nik

 

My High School physics professor - God Bless Him - Dr. Alston, passed this out to us one day instead of doing physics!

 

See.... That's what happens when a Rocket Scientist writes Christmas Stories!!!!

 

I resemble that remark!

 

 

Bump from last year

 

A Rocket Scientist’s Analysis of the Santa Claus legend:

1. 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 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 that there is at least one good child in each.

2. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say, that for every Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000 of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, 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 on to 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 purpose of our calculations). We are talking about 1.25 Km per household, a total of 120.8 million Km, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 1040 Km per second … 3,000 times the speed of sound or 0.346% of the speed of light. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a mere 43.8 Km per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 25 Km per hour.

3. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium Lego set (two pounds or nearly 1 kG), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds, and even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten 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).

4. 600,000 tons traveling at 1040 Km per second creates enormous air resistance....this would heat up the lead reindeer in the same fashion as a space shuttle re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 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 1040 km/sec in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 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 reddish pink (HO HO HO!) goo.

5. Therefore I conclude, if Santa did exist in the past, he's very dead now.

 

Another wonderful Christmas message to share with friends and family. My mother is still giggling and we are printing it out to share after Christmas Eve dinner. I think we will skip reading it to my nieces and nephew....for now...

 

Most if not everybody knows that the North American Aerospace Defense Command tracks Santa during his annual world tour... www.noradsanta.org

Being that this year is the 50th anniversary of NORAD's Santa tracking I thought I'd share how NORAD got involved with this mission. The story can actually be found at the BBC WorldService site.

It all started in 1955 when a Colorado Springs department store ran an ad which featured the "hotline" number to their in store Santa Claus... The trouble is there was a misprint in the ad and the hotline number that was published wasn't actually to Santa, but actually the red phone hotline at NORAD!

So imagine the surprise of Col Harry Shoup when he answered the phone one evening expecting the caller to be a 4 star general or somebody else at the Pentagon, and instead heard a little girl ask "Are you Santa?" As the story goes once the Col figured out what had happened, he told the girl's mother "No, I'm not Santa... But I know where he is." And the rest is history.

Now you're probably wondering how NORAD is able to track Santa... Well according to NORAD it's Rudolph's nose, they say it gives off a heat signature similar to a missle launch!