Santa told to slim down for Christmas to 'set a good example' to children

 

Last updated at 10:28am on 5th November 2007 Comments (1)

Santa has been told he must slim down, or face eviction from shopping centres at Christmas

 

 

 

 

Santa is being told to shift the pounds before Christmas - because the obese saint is failing to set a "good example" for children.

 

 

The traditional children's hero, best known for feasting on mince pies left out on Christmas eve, has always sported a bulging midriff.

But shopping centre bosses are giving the well-wisher his marching orders - to the nearest gym - to tackle the increasing problem of obesity.

The revelation comes after a medical report earlier this month stated that by 2050 more than 50 per cent of Brits will be obese.

Bluewater shopping centre in Greenhithe, Kent, has even gone one step further and set-up a Santa boot camp.

Fiona Campbell-Reilly, spokeswoman at the shopping centre, said: "Santa has been around for years, but society has changed and our Santa needs to reflect this.

"Bluewater's Santa Boot Camp is getting Santa in shape and setting a good example to children who idolise him.

"He will still be the same lovable jolly man, but will be fitter and healthier."

Despite Santa burning 600 calories an hour from delivering presents, the problem lies in the tasty mince pies left as a treat.

If he ate every single mince pie left for him by eager children in the UK he would gain an astonishing 721,000 lbs.

Dr Charmaine Griffiths, spokesperson from the British Heart Foundation, said: "The bootcamp would encourage people to get a bit more active - it is a great idea.

"If you are budding santa or a hopeful elf, then we should all be taking steps to being fit and healthier at Christmas.

"Half an hour of exercise, three days a week could make your heart healthier. I think that like most of us, santa could be doing more to make himself that little bit fitter.

"He can have a pie every so often but try to squeeze in a few carrots as well."

Christmas message: Santa's dead

 

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the

world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu,

Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the

workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million according

to the population reference bureau). At an average (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.

 

Different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels

east to west (which seems logical), 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. 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 our

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,

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.

 

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that

each child gets nothing more than a medium sized lego set (two pounds), the

sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. 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, not the monarch!!).

 

600,000 tons travelling 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 vaporised 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. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) 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.

 

Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

 

Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

 

From obesity??:rolleyes: