I remember my first Christmas adventure with Grandma. I was just a kid. I remember tearing across town on my bike to visit her. On the way, my big sister dropped the bomb: "There is no Santa Claus," she jeered. "Even dummies know that!"
My Grandma was not the gushy kind, never had been. I fled to her that day because I knew she would be straight with me. I knew Grandma always told the truth, and I knew that the truth always went down a whole lot easier when swallowed with one of her "world-famous" cinnamon buns. I knew they were world-famous, because Grandma said so. It had to be true.
Grandma was home, and the buns were still warm. Between bites, I told her everything. She was ready for me. "No Santa Claus?" she snorted .... "Ridiculous! Don't believe it! That rumor has been going around for years, and it makes me mad, plain mad!! Now, put on your coat, and let's go."
"Go? Go where, Grandma?" I asked. I hadn't even finished my second world-famous cinnamon bun.
"Where" turned out to be Kerby's General Store, the one store in town that had a little bit of just about everything. As we walked through its doors, Grandma handed me ten dollars. That was a bundle in those days. "Take this money," she said, "and buy something for someone who needs it. I'll wait for you in the car." Then she turned and walked out of Kerby's.
I was only eight years old. I'd often gone shopping with my mother, but never had I shopped for anything all by myself. The store seemed big and crowded, full of people scrambling to finish their Christmas shopping.
For a few moments I just stood there, confused, clutching that ten-dollar bill, wondering what to buy, and who on earth to buy it for. I thought of everybody I knew: my family, my friends, my neighbors, the kids at school, the people who went to my church. I was just about thought out, when I suddenly thought of Bobby Decker. He was a kid with bad breath and messy hair, and he sat right behind me in Mrs. Pollock's grade-two class. Bobby Decker didn't have a coat. I knew that because he never went out to recess during the winter. His mother always wrote a note telling the teacher that he had a cough, but all we kids knew that Bobby Decker didn't have a cough; he didn't have a good coat. I fingered the ten-dollar bill with growing excitement. I would buy Bobby Decker a coat! I settled on a red corduroy one that had a hood to it. It looked real warm, and he would like that.
"Is this a Christmas present for someone?" the lady behind the counter asked kindly, as I laid my ten dollars down.
"Yes, ma'am," I replied shyly. "It's for Bobby."
The nice lady smiled at me, as I told her about how Bobby really needed a good winter coat. I didn't get any change, but she put the coat in a bag, smiled again, and wished me a Merry Christmas.
That evening, Grandma helped me wrap the coat (a little tag fell out of the coat, and Grandma tucked it in her Bible) in Christmas paper and ribbons and wrote, "To Bobby, From Santa Claus" on it. Grandma said that Santa always insisted on secrecy. Then she drove me over to Bobby Decker's house, explaining as we went that I was now and forever officially, one of Santa's helpers.
Grandma parked down the street from Bobby's house, and she and I crept noiselessly and hid in the bushes by his front walk. Then Grandma gave me a nudge. "All right, Santa Claus," she whispered, "get going."
I took a deep breath, dashed for his front door, threw the present down on his step, pounded his door and flew back to the safety of the bushes and Grandma.
Together we waited breathlessly in the darkness for the front door to open. Finally it did, and there stood Bobby.
Fifty years haven't dimmed the thrill of those moments spent shivering, beside my Grandma, in Bobby Decker's bushes. That night, I realized that those awful rumors about Santa Claus were just what Grandma said they were: ridiculous. Santa was alive and well, and we were on his team.
I still have the Bible, with the coat tag tucked inside: $19.95.
May you always have LOVE to share, HEALTH to spare and FRIENDS that care...And may you always believe in the magic of Santa Claus!
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Rene
December 16, 2008, 8:30am
Guest User
That was a wonderful story, nice way to start my day. Thanks JoAnn
I absolutely love this time of the year. Along with my deep religious regard for this holiday, I also still feel like a kid waiting for Santa Claus to come. I love the presents, the family, food, the tree, the lights and the Christmas music! I love it all!
And I think it's neat that we receive presents on someone else's birthday.
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18 ) in the world, but since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
3) 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move onto the next house.
4) Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculation we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household a total trip of 75½ million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-mad vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - conventional reindeer can run , tops, 15 miles per hour.
5) Though not included in the calculations below, even without prior knowledge of Santa’s weight we can estimate how quickly it is growing during the night. Assuming 2 chocolate chip cookies per household at 2 ounces each, and one 8 ounce glass of milk Santa would consume a total of 12 ounces of foodstuffs per stop. This works out to 205.6 pounds of cookies and 822 pounds of milk per second. Each hour, Santa would be putting on 3,699,360 pounds. By the end of the evening Santa, if he weighed nothing at the start of his trip, would weigh 57,340 tons. A prodigious Santa, indeed.
6) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
7) 353,000 tons (not counting Santa’s own ponderous weight) traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Considering Santa’s age, there is little chance the reindeer are protected by any kind of ablation shield as this was a 20th century invention. This means the lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. per second - each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250- pound Santa (not including his frequent snacks) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh with 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18 ) in the world, but since Santa doesn’t (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there’s at least one good child in each.
3) 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move onto the next house.
4) Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculation we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household a total trip of 75½ million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc. This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-mad vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - conventional reindeer can run , tops, 15 miles per hour.
5) Though not included in the calculations below, even without prior knowledge of Santa’s weight we can estimate how quickly it is growing during the night. Assuming 2 chocolate chip cookies per household at 2 ounces each, and one 8 ounce glass of milk Santa would consume a total of 12 ounces of foodstuffs per stop. This works out to 205.6 pounds of cookies and 822 pounds of milk per second. Each hour, Santa would be putting on 3,699,360 pounds. By the end of the evening Santa, if he weighed nothing at the start of his trip, would weigh 57,340 tons. A prodigious Santa, indeed.
6) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison, this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
7) 353,000 tons (not counting Santa’s own ponderous weight) traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. Considering Santa’s age, there is little chance the reindeer are protected by any kind of ablation shield as this was a 20th century invention. This means the lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. per second - each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250- pound Santa (not including his frequent snacks) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh with 4,315,015 pounds of force. In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
Christmas 2001. As many here will know, NORAD does a "Santa Tracking radar" every year, and has a "hotline" for kids to call to see where Santa is. This has been a joint effort by the US and Canda through NORAD since the 50's. The story behind that is interesting as well, look it up. But this was the Christmas after 9/11, so it was a bit different.
Those manning the Santa Hotline started getting paniced calls about Santa's safety (originally from Canada, but elsewhere as well). Some enterprising junior officer from the RCAF (Royal Canadian Airforce), had a quick mind and came up with a "scheme" to assure the callers that Santa's safety would be insured. He said that Santa was being escorted on his route around the world, so there was no danger. They even went so far as to "update" the radar image to show the escorts with Santa. Word spread around, mainly to NATO, and soon everybody was on board. As Santa crossed a border, he would be "handed off" to the next nation's AF for escort. As word spread, the panic calls stopped coming.
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
If you believe in Satan, than you surely also believe in God. Can't have one without the other.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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