Richard Hogan: The technological and logistical magic of Santa

Richard Hogan. Photograph Moya Nolan

There are only four more sleeps. With the length of four long days and four intolerably long nights. 

All over this pale blue dot children are holding their breath, waiting for darkness to cover the roofs, just a few more times. Then magic. 

Hooves on slate, against blighted stars. An inconceivable endless red sack of dreams, and flying reindeer.

There’s Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and (drum roll) Rudolph. And of course, the big man himself. (More drum rolling please.) 

Santa Claus, Dáidí na Nollaig, Father Christmas, Papai Noel, Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas, Hoteiosho, Weihnachtsman, and Kris Kringle, to mention a few.

In fairness, he gets around. So, we can’t expect him to have one simple name like the rest of us mortals. And boy does he get around. 

Santa grapples with a technological and logistical nightmare that would baffle the best scientists at NASA. He has to visit around 170m houses in one night. Which translates to about 500m or 600m children.

Of course, a percentage of those must be bold, but I’m an optimist. 

If I received a bike back in 1984 after tormenting the angry neighbour from up the road for the year, Santa most be on the side of us fallen children. He must have a soft spot for devilment.

Even my four-year-old daughter, two years ago, declared to the bounty in front of her on Christmas morning, ‘I knew I was good’. 

She wasn’t so sure. And after the scene she had caused one evening in a restaurant, I wasn’t so sure either. Santa, you old softie.

But I digress. The task that lies ahead of him every year, is insurmountable to our limited, earthly knowledge. 

That’s the problem, we try to put our understanding of quantum physics, to something that is beyond our current grasp. 

Taking weather and time zones into account, Santa has about 32 hours to accomplish his task; making all the children around the world who believe in him happy.

What better task is there?

Now, I’m no mathematician, but if you break down 170m houses in 32 hours, Santa has to traverse 1,475 houses every single second.

That gives him about 1/1,500 of a second to bring the reindeer to a halt, get off the sleigh, down the chimney, slug the whiskey, eat the mince pies, drink the low-fat milk, and place the presents carefully under the tree; do it all surreptitiously and be gone to the next house. 

No time to catch his breath. Usain Bolt could only dream of times like this. And Santa doesn’t even train.

You’d think he would be a little more svelte, with that explosive blast of energy he has to expand every 1/1,500 of a second. 

I can barely muster a 5k run once a week and I’m in better shape than the big man. These fitness gurus haven’t a clue. And the reindeer, how do they do it?

Well, the ones that children chase around Phoenix Park, to the dismay of the rangers, clock an average of 24 km/h. That’s fast enough to get away from the demented hands of overly eager children, but not fast enough to pull Santa’s sleigh.

The reindeer pulling the sleigh have to move at an astounding supersonic speed. They move, scientists reckon, at an unfathomable 1,000 kilometres per second. 

And they can never be delayed by de-icers, weather, over-booking, etc, and they certainly cannot trumpet when they arrive on time.

Ryanair, eat your heart out.

The sleigh itself is extraordinary. Let’s just estimate, on the cautious side, each present weighs 1kg. 

Which, with bicycles, hover boards, VR headsets, tractors, diggers, Barbie and her bloody Dreamhouse, etc, we are grossly underestimating the weight. 

That gives Santa’s sleigh a starting mass of about 600,000 tons.

The speed required to pull that mass is once again astounding. Scientists say the lead reindeer would be subject to 15 quintillion joules of energy. Apparently that’s a lot. 

And if the lead reindeer didn’t manage to protect the other reindeer from this energy, they would all spontaneously burst into flames creating a mass ball of incinerating reindeer in the night sky, traumatising children for years to come. 

Not the stuff of Christmas songs, although Shane MacGowan would have given it a good go.

So, thank God for Rudolph. Now, I know why his nose is red. It’s a heat shield to protect the others from experiencing temperatures close to the surface of the sun. Legend.

Santa, has an incredible task ahead of him. But of course he has a great woman behind him keeping the whole show on the road.

He has to travel at incomprehensible speeds, with presents that don’t disappoint and land supersonic reindeer quietly on the roofs of over 170m homes throughout this world.

He has to digest 170m glasses of whiskey and milk and eat 170m mince pies, without becoming ill. 

And he only has 32 hours to accomplish it. How does he do it? Magic.

Happy Christmas one and all. Bain taitneamh as gach uile nóiméad.