… is that you can’t just blindly “believe” in Santa Claus. You have to justify it scientifically. You have uncomfortable questions about the feasability of Santa’s one-night journey. How does it work? How can it be explained using the laws of physics? And so it causes you to say to your mother such things as:
“So Santa’s sleigh can go at the speed of light, I bet.”
Kids crack me up. Over thanksgiving my wife and I stayed with my brother’s family. One morning my nephew (2 years old) is playing with Sarah and looks up at her and asks “Aunt Sarah, do you like life?” Of course Sarah was rather floored by the question and is like “umm. yeah, life is pretty good.”
At which point my brother walks by and says “He means the cereal.”
HAHAHAHAHA
I believe Santa’s sleigh made the Kessel Run in under 12 parsecs.
Faster than light, probably.
My son Ethan told us about 2 years ago in all seriousness that Cool Whip is made of ghosts.
Pardon me if I’ve mentioned this before. :-)
Ken:
BWAHAHAHA That is brilliant!
Dan:
Very good reference. Like it, like it.
Of course it wouldn’t technically have to go at the speed of light.. just reasonably close to it.. IIRC the time dilation effect increases as the velocity increases. [/physics geek]
If you want to fact-check a 7-year-old’s physics logic, you go right ahead.
I just choose to be in awe of his little contemplative mind.
:)
I still kind of can’t get over the whole Cool Whip is made of ghosts thing.
I love that.
What you do is get the kid hooked on Doctor Who, then tell him Santa is a Time Lord and his sleigh is a Tardis. It completely explains everything.
Mark –
I will pass the word on to his parents. Good suggestion.
I can vaguely remember my own increasingly complex rationalizations about Santa physics when I was around that age. This will be his last Santa Christmas, if he makes it. So sweetly sad…
we always like to go to the norad site on christmas eve and track santa on radar. they have a rough-voiced general who gets on the air and barks “santa has enetered north american airspace. all children on the east coast must go to bed NOW!” heh.
I’m not looking forward to “de-Santa-ing” my kids; I myself would prefer that there were a Santa. I’d like to think I could still hear that sleigh bell. ;-)
My wife and I were watching The Santa Clause when she asked me whether I’d take the job, assuming the movie were an accurate depiction of it.
I’d take it in a hot minute, I said. Aside from fatherhood–best job ever.
A humorous story about Santa:
In college, I watched Rudolph the red nosed Reindeer with a small group of friends. We were drunk. But we were SO into the show.
There were 4 of us. One of them, a dear friend of ours, was this genius girl named Emily. (Not Emily Jones, another Emily) She was from the Dominican Republic. She was pretty much a world-class African dancer, but she was also an electrical engineer. Huh? She had a mohawk, too, and used to be in a gang when she was a teenager. Needless to say, this girl was incredible. She was a math whiz, and the only minority GIRL in the engineering department at our university. Also, she was a blast.
So we’re watching Rudolph. We’re watching the painful scene where Rudolph is pretty much banished from the group because of his nose. Santa does not come off well in that special, if you recall. He’s pretty much a hard-ass. He’s cold of heart. Rudolph is devastated, Rudolph’s mother is crushed at his banishment … but this does not sway the iron-clad will of Santa. Santa is firm. Rudolph is not allowed to join in any of the reindeer games, and THAT. IS. FINAL.
So we’re watching this in silence. We are all drunk.
Emily murmurs, to herself, in a quiet sad voice, “Santa is a racist motherfucker.”
There is a brief pause. We all think about this. Drunkenly.
Then – needless to say – we laughed non-stop for literally about 20 minutes, and missed the rest of the special.
Nice clarification on the ‘Emily’ reference, Sheila.. ;)
*ducks*
Right, because I’ve met Emily, and she’s Dominican and has a mohawk – so I just wanted to be clear …
This OTHER Emily, my college friend – is the one who had an advisor at college say to her (and we imitate this woman TO. THIS. DAY):
“Em’ly. I did not know that you wasn’t a Negro student.”
This must have happened when Emily was filling out some form or whatever, and had to put in her “race” on the form. She is not black. She is Dominican.
The snippety advisor looked at the form, glanced at Emily, her black face and her huge mohawk, and said, in a tone of surprise, “Em’ly. I did not know you wasn’t a Negro student.”
This is in 1986 and this woman is still saying “Negro”. At a party later that week, Emily re-enacted this scene for all of us probably 25 times. We especially loved how the woman said Emily’s name. “Em’ly.”