Skuld's Santa Claus
An AMG fanfic by 
Shori Wong


     "There are approximately two billion children, meaning people under 18, on
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" Skuld said, pointing the little red dot from her
laser pointer onto the graph she had quickle produced. She and her sisters and
Keiichi and Megumi were all in her room.
  "Um, how do you know it makes out to that number?" Keiichi couldn't help but
ask.
  "The Population Reference Bureau" she said matter-of-factly, as if expecting
everyone to have known. She didn't really think much of the Bureau simply
because she, through some simple matematical calculations, could find out the
population of the world, give or take a few people. 
  She cleared her throat and continued as if uninterupted.
  "At an average, which was derived from the 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. Santa has about 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" 
  "Yeah, of course," Urd said, already bored. She was just humoring Skuld,
hoping she would finish her little speech.
  Skuld casted Urd a exasperated glance before continuing "Anyway, 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 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" she
said in one breath. As she stood there in her bedroom, she noticed that Keiichi
seemed rather lost in how she came up with these number. She ignored him. 
  "Do you follow me?" she asked Keiichi.
  "Um, yeah, I think so," came the reply.
  "Good. Now 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 the 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, which is 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" Skuld said.
   "The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set which would be around
two pounds, the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa
himself" she continued. When Urd was about to open her mouth to say somthing,
Skuld quickly continued.
  "On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. 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?" Keiichi interrupted.
  "No, I mean the monarch, or course!" she replied sarcastically. She then took
a moment to wait until everyone was settled before continuing. "Anyway, 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 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 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration
forces of 17,500 g's. Let's just say Santa weighs 250 pounds, which seems a bit
on the slim side, 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" she said with a smile "Therefore, if Santa did
exist, he's dead now"
  Having made her point, Skuld casted everyone a happy smile before leaving her
room. Urd looked totally confused, wondering exactly why she even bothered to
listen to her baby sister anyway. Belldandy, who had been quiet the whole time,
listening intently, understood Skuld's theory, but winced at the last part where
Skuld mentioned how Santa would die a horrible death.
  Urd turned toward Keiichi and chuckled, "Well, at least that explains why she
doesn't believe in Santa"


Hello, this is my second attempt at a fanfic, except I would really call this a
fanfic because this entire story was derived from a message someone forwarded to
me. I'm pretty sure you already came across a similar version of this story not
too long ago. Unfortunately, I don't know who wrote the version this story is
derived from, but who ever you are, I'd like to give my gratitude toward him or
her^_^  Please send me comment if you have any. I would really appreciate it. I
like getting email.


-Shori
"It is not foolish to be skeptic. 
View your skepticism at its source"
http://www.li.net/~jeffwong/shori.htm