Mystery
This week: The Mysterious Ways of Santa Edited by: Jeff More Newsletters By This Editor
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Random Mystery Trivia of the Week: Nonfiction author Erik Larson is the author of many bestselling true crime novels, perhaps most notably 2004's Edgar-winning The Devil in the White City, which concurrently follows the construction of Chicago's 1893 World's Fair and the life of "H.H. Holmes," one of America's first documented serial killers. Holmes is best-known for his "Murder Castle," a hotel designed specifically so he could murder and dispose of young women he lured in from the nearby Fair. While he ultimately confessed to 27 murders, some accounts put Holmes' actual body count at over two hundred.
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THE MYSTERIOUS WAYS OF SANTA
That Santa Claus sure is a mysterious guy, isn't he? Somehow he manages to figure out if each kid has been naughty or nice each year, he knows when you're sleeping and when you're awake, and he somehow manages to fit presents for every kid in a single sleigh and delivers them to every house around the world, all in a single night. How does Santa manage to accomplish all of these magical feats? Luckily, there are more than a few theories floating around the Internet about how Santa makes all this happen during the most wonderful time of year:
THEORY #1: Santa is a demigod. Some claim that Santa is nothing less than a divine entity. Like other demigods such as Achilles, Gilgamesh, Hercules, Perseus, and Theseus, Santa isn't entirely human. As the offspring of some kind of mythical and powerful being, Santa possesses some kind of supernatural abilities that allow him to achieve these miraculous feats.
THEORY #2: There aren't many good children. A few people have even gone so far as to claim that there just aren't that many good children in any given year, making it a piece of cake for Santa to reach those few households who actually do have angelic children that deserve Santa's gifts.
THEORY #3: Teleporting Santa. Maybe Santa has the ability to just teleport from rooftop to rooftop in his sleigh. No need to travel the long distances from house to house, city to city, country to county... just instantaneous transportation to each deserving kid's rooftop.
THEORY #4: Time-Stopping Santa. All that teleporting could still be awfully stressful for Santa as he tries to get around to everyone before dawn. Another possible solution is that he just simply stops or freezes time that night so that he can make all of his deliveries without having to worry about anyone staying up late or waking up early.
THEORY #5: Santa's surveillance system. Along the lines of how Santa manages to keep track of all the naughty and nice kids, it's been suggested that Santa employs every technique from hacking into existing security cameras, to sending out spy drones, to hacking our Facebook accounts and reading our Twitter feeds. He may even have a computer than can read our minds!
THEORY #6: Shrink Ray. How does Santa fit presents for all the children of the world into one sack? It wouldn't be very efficient if he had to keep making trips back to the North Pole to restock, so some have suggested that his sleigh (along with a hot cocoa dispenser, iPod dock, speedometer, and GPS) comes equipped with a shrink ray that allows him to miniaturize all the gifts and bring them back to regular size before he deposits them under his tree. ALTERNATIVE SUGGESTION: It's also possible that Santa's sack has some kind of extradimensional lining, allowing him to store all the gifts (and more) inside a space the size of a sack in our dimension.
THEORY #7: Stardust Propulsion. While it's widely acknowledged that the Santa would need to travel at Mach 3000 (about 2.3 million miles per hour) to deliver all the presents around the world on time... and traveling that fast would surely create a few sonic booms that would keep people up at night (if not outright ripping the roofs off people's houses! ), some have proposed that Santa has harnessed some kind of stardust-powered antimatter reactor in his sleigh that allows him to travel fast enough to deliver all the presents without violating the noise restrictions that some communities have. This would mean the reindeer are largely for show... or perhaps just for local deliveries after the stardust antimatter reactor gets them there.
THEORY #8: Camouflage Suit. You may not think a big red and white suit would be the most subtle of fashion statements, but some have theorized that the reason why kids never see Santa is because his suit is lined with a state-of-the-art camouflage system that allows him to blend in with his surroundings. So even if your kids stay up at night hoping for a glimpse of the big guy doing his thing, he can just stand still and blend in with his immediate surroundings.
And there you have it. Several possible explanations for how Santa manages to accomplish the mysterious things that he does. The next time someone tells you that the most mysterious time of year is Halloween with its dark and sinister motives, or Valentine's Day with its secret admirers... just think about all the mysteries surrounding Santa Claus and how he manages to do all the things he does. And then tell me that Christmas isn't the most mysterious time of year.
Happy Holidays and best wishes to you all for a safe and successful New Year. See you in 2012!
Until next time,
-- Jeff
QUESTION OF THE WEEK: What other holiday mysteries intrigue you?
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