Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house / Not a creature was stirring, except for Santa who trying to choke down his billionth cookie of the evening.
In our experience, the over-21 set tends to be Santa skeptical. Some people get hung up on the impracticality of delivering presents to the roughly 2.2 billion Christians worldwide. Others concern themselves with the physics of flying reindeer or the difficulty of stuffing a morbidly obese man down the narrow flue of a modern chimney. At Drink Your Carbs, our skepticism springs from the sheer volume of cookies left on hearths that, for politeness reasons, Santa is required to consume.
In our experience, the over-21 set tends to be Santa skeptical. Some people get hung up on the impracticality of delivering presents to the roughly 2.2 billion Christians worldwide. Others concern themselves with the physics of flying reindeer or the difficulty of stuffing a morbidly obese man down the narrow flue of a modern chimney. At Drink Your Carbs, our skepticism springs from the sheer volume of cookies left on hearths that, for politeness reasons, Santa is required to consume.
For the sake of argument, we will assume that Santa exists and all of the mythology is true. The epic poem, The Night Before Christmas, makes no mention of Santa’s height, weight or base metabolic rate, so we have no choice but to rely on generalities. We do know, however, that if Santa exercises a modicum of restraint and eats only a single cookie from each plate left out, the total number of cookies that St. Nicholas will be obligated to eat is slightly over 1 billion. The standard rule-of-thumb is that it takes 3500 excess calories to add a pound of body weight. If Santa is not bulimic—and surely the British tabloids would have picked up on that—on Christmas Eve Santa’s already ample weight will increase by just over 26 million pounds.
Obviously, the biggest implication of this is for the flying reindeer that have to haul him around as his weight grows exponentially. Equally concerning is the fact that the average suburban roof is not structurally designed to bear this kind of weight. Believers better hope Santa gets to their home early in the evening; after the first few hours the results are likely to resemble a post-tornado trailer park.
From a DYC perspective, 1 billion cookies equals roughly 45-60 million DYC-compliant drinks. We might suggest leaving out shots and glasses of wine instead of cookies, but that also seems excessive. Santa would pose a serious threat to public safety flying his sleigh after visiting a single subdivision. The best policy is unquestionably to leave an unopened bottle for Santa to take back to the North Pole. [Note to parents: No need to thanks us. We’re just glad to help the team.]
For those of you who want to geek-out and check our math, it’s simple. Start with the 2.2 Million Christians in the world. We understand that not every Christian celebrates Christmas, but we believe that this number is balanced out by Jews with Hanukkah bushes and Scientologist who celebrate with Xenu shrubs. We also assume an average of 90 calories per cookie. This takes into account chocolate-dipped Snikerdoodles as well as the kind of cookies Andrea’s mother used to bake from whole grains and shredded carrots that were dense enough to stop small caliber bullets.
In an effort to be conservative with our numbers, we have assumed that from each plate left out a single cookie is eaten and that only families with children bother to leave out cookies. Figuring out how many families this represents is more difficult. 46% of American families have children under the age of 18 living at home. The numbers for households with children globally is higher, but the statistics are available only country by country. We are way too lazy to build a spreadsheet to average the 190+ countries currently surveyed by the UN, so we went with the American number.
One billion cookies. 90 calories per cookie. That makes for a 90 billion calorie night for St. Nicholas. If it turns out that Santa actually consumes all of those cookies rather than dumping them in the bushes like Andrea does with unwanted cocktails, he should patent the cutting-edge sans-a-belt technology that keeps his red suit from self-destructing under the strain. With current obesity trends, that technology may turn out to be more valuable than even flying reindeer.
Obviously, the biggest implication of this is for the flying reindeer that have to haul him around as his weight grows exponentially. Equally concerning is the fact that the average suburban roof is not structurally designed to bear this kind of weight. Believers better hope Santa gets to their home early in the evening; after the first few hours the results are likely to resemble a post-tornado trailer park.
From a DYC perspective, 1 billion cookies equals roughly 45-60 million DYC-compliant drinks. We might suggest leaving out shots and glasses of wine instead of cookies, but that also seems excessive. Santa would pose a serious threat to public safety flying his sleigh after visiting a single subdivision. The best policy is unquestionably to leave an unopened bottle for Santa to take back to the North Pole. [Note to parents: No need to thanks us. We’re just glad to help the team.]
For those of you who want to geek-out and check our math, it’s simple. Start with the 2.2 Million Christians in the world. We understand that not every Christian celebrates Christmas, but we believe that this number is balanced out by Jews with Hanukkah bushes and Scientologist who celebrate with Xenu shrubs. We also assume an average of 90 calories per cookie. This takes into account chocolate-dipped Snikerdoodles as well as the kind of cookies Andrea’s mother used to bake from whole grains and shredded carrots that were dense enough to stop small caliber bullets.
In an effort to be conservative with our numbers, we have assumed that from each plate left out a single cookie is eaten and that only families with children bother to leave out cookies. Figuring out how many families this represents is more difficult. 46% of American families have children under the age of 18 living at home. The numbers for households with children globally is higher, but the statistics are available only country by country. We are way too lazy to build a spreadsheet to average the 190+ countries currently surveyed by the UN, so we went with the American number.
One billion cookies. 90 calories per cookie. That makes for a 90 billion calorie night for St. Nicholas. If it turns out that Santa actually consumes all of those cookies rather than dumping them in the bushes like Andrea does with unwanted cocktails, he should patent the cutting-edge sans-a-belt technology that keeps his red suit from self-destructing under the strain. With current obesity trends, that technology may turn out to be more valuable than even flying reindeer.
