is there a santa claus

I remember when I was still teaching, I ever shared with my class this article written by John Szymanski for the November 1998 issue of Physics Review. Excerpt:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west. 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 on to the next house. [...] This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound.

4) Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321300 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' could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214200 reindeer.

5) 353000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as space craft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillian joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and crate deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized with 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal force 17500.06 times grater than gravity.

For every theory there is a counter-theory, and one such is "quantum physics saves Santa". It's ok, I don't understand Heisenberg either.

Although it sounds unscientific, I kind of wish kids nowadays believe in Santa. Do I believe in Santa? I wish I do.

Merry Christmas!