You thought the person in the red outfit giving out treats to children on Christmas Eve was a jolly, overweight elf with a white beard and a team of reindeer leading the way. Nah. That's just what Santa's spin doctors want the world to believe.
Want to know who really decides who's naughty or nice? Try Holda, the Teutonic goddess of winter. I first discovered Holda many years ago while researching the Pagan origins of Santa Claus.it was Holda--not Santa--who brought gifts to children and determined who was "naughty or nice." I also encountered lore depicting her as dressed in red and going down chimneys to bring gifts to children. An old Germanic tradition included leaving an offering of food and milk on December 24, for holda also known as Mother Night.
At Yuletide, she travels the world in a carriage and bestows good health, good fortune, and other gifts to humans that honor her. She not only is connected with Winter Solstice itself, but also with the holiday season that continues many of its customs, the 12 days of Christmas--from December 25 through January 6.

just alittle note it thought id share
K~

That was pretty interesting. Thanks for posting it. never heard about it before. Looks like something else for me to look into while being bored at work. :)

Makes sense, Santa Clause is just the English pronunciation of the German for Saint Nick.

Dawn: "Um, guys -- hello, puberty? Sort of figured out the whole no-Santa thing."
Anya: "That's a myth."
Dawn: "Yeah."
Anya: "No, I mean, it's a myth that it's a myth. There is a Santa Claus."
Xander: "The advantage of having a thousand-year-old girlfriend. Inside scoop."
Tara: "There's a Santa Claus?"
Anya: "Mm-hmm. Been around since, like, the 1500s. But he wasn't always called Santa. But with, you know, Christmas night, flying reindeer, coming down the chimney -- all true."
Dawn: "All true?"
Anya: "Well, he doesn't traditionally bring presents so much as, you know, disembowel children. But otherwise..."

Buffy.

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 there is at least one good child in each. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming 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 stocking, 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 onto 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 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.

Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 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 traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 vaporized 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 17,000 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, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
Merry Christmas

yeah but i dont believe in organized religion so i dont believe in all that stuff, about santa and his sleighand what not i believe that anythings possible and that it is possible that the christian religion stole the idea from pagan religion
K~

Originally posted by A_open_Fire_
yeah but i dont believe in organized religion so i dont believe in all that stuff, about santa and his sleighand what not i believe that anythings possible and that it is possible that the christian religion stole the idea from pagan religion
K~

Very good! That is actually what happened. Just like with Easter (ever wonder what the bunny had to do with ressurection?), the church decided to adopt certain aspects of pagan religion to increase the amount of people that would celebrate THEIR religious holidays. Not ragging on religion, but the old English Church did a lot of screwy things like that...

I can actually tell you where the Easter Bunny came from, but it's more suited to the Everything Forum...:|

dragon star your cool.
k~