Santa is a Ho-Ho-Hoax!

Ethan Kraus, Opinions Writer

When you think of Christmas, you think of trees, presents, snow, and family. Your mind may also wander to the famed Santa Claus; a man who brings gifts to all the good boys and girls across the world. However, these thoughts are not based on fact, as Santa is not a creature of reality. The fact is undeniable: Santa is a hoax. Below, I will outline the facts that corroborate this theory, and prove that my nemesis, Samuel Collett, is delusional.

First of all, no one has ever seen Santa Claus. Despite the countless viral videos and photographs which claim to have finally captured the man, they all have been debunked by image authenticity analysts. Furthermore, if Santa truly travels to every house overnight as believers claim, the fact that no one has ever laid eyes on him is a statistical impossibility. With absolutely no eye witnesses, it’s awfully hard to claim that Santa is a tangible being.

Secondly, Santa could never fit down a chimney. According to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, Santa supposedly weighs 1,260 lbs after he’s done delivering gifts. This means that Santa has waistline measurement of approximately 277.2 inches. With a waistline this massive, there is no physical way Santa could climb down even the widest chimney. This means that Santa’s main method of delivering gifts is impossible to execute, further supporting the claim that he cannot be real.

Additionally, there is no way Santa could travel to every home in one night. Based on various calculations regarding the distance he would need to span and the time frame he has to do so, Santa would need to travel 650 meters per second (or 5,000 times the speed of sound) in order to deliver gifts to every house on Earth in one night, and that’s not even accounting for the time he would have to spend inside each house setting the gifts down and eating cookies. Also, based on his approximate mass and the immense force of friction that would come as a result of travelling this quickly, Santa and his sleigh would surely burst into flames mid-flight. Because of these calculations, it’s hard to believe Santa is real, as there is no way he could travel that speed at his estimated weight (not to mention the nearly 60,000 tons of gifts piled on the back of his sleigh).

Finally, it is believed Santa eats cookies from every house he visits, and this, too, is an absurd claim. Eating nearly 7 billion cookies in one night would kill anyone who tried to do so, and Santa is no exception. On top of that, Santa also supposedly drinks milk at every house he visits, as well. Not even a god could consume that much milk, which would total many millions of gallons. Obviously, the question now is “well, who eats the cookies then?” and my response to that is that there are some things that science can’t answer.

To conclude, the existence of Santa cannot be proved nor reasoned, therefore he cannot be real. Despite Sam Collett’s nonsensical ramblings he calls “evidence,” Santa is not, cannot, and will never be real.