Santa has been around a long time, and over that time, he has managed to keep up with technology quite nicely. He has even led the way on a few things.
Of course, at low speed, Santa uses the power of reindeer to make his sleigh go. However, at high speed, it is propelled using ram jet technology which makes the sleigh zoom through the air at the speed of light. Many times over the years, Santa has been asked how he can complete all the transportation of packages and other items to all the children of the world in only one night. You might remember from your studies at school a little about Dr. Einstein. He published a formula whereby anything moving at the speed of light experiences time standing still. This is precisely how Santa gets to all the places he has to go in only one night. When he is en route, he is at the speed of light so time stands still. Of course, Santa has a GPS in his sleigh. This way, he knows right where to go next. As well, the GPS leads him to the closest outhouse should he have to relieve himself as the night progresses.
Miniaturization is one of Santa’s favourite technologies. While his sleigh stays full size, he miniaturizes the items he has to carry in the sleigh. This is how a car for someone or 543 sets of skis can fit in the sleigh at the same time. He shrinks himself if needed to fit through the chimney. The machine miniaturizes him when he touches the chimney outside on the roof, and when he comes out of the chimney in the house, he immediately goes back to full size along with his sack of presents.
You might have noticed that he does not age. He uses a special cream from the Fountain of Youth high in the mountains of South America that he dabs on himself to keep him looking exactly the same even though he is very old. The only catch is that you have to be very fat to use it. That’s why people don’t use the same cream. They don’t want to be huge like Santa. By using the special cream, he can keep his same look.
Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer actually had his nose light up because of a lucky accident. When he was really young, he was very thirsty one day and stopped for a drink at a pond. The pond happened to be a cooling tank for water used to cool a nuclear reactor. The water was radioactive. It was undergoing treatment to keep it from hurting people when Rudolf flew in and drank from the pond. He was quite sick for a long time, but in the end, his nose lit up like a light bulb—and still does.
The elves used to be chosen from all the elves in the world. However, in recent times elves have disappeared from almost everywhere. Santa was getting pretty worried about finding new ones when he happened to see that sheep on TV that was cloned in Britain. Now he is cloning elves. He’s only tried it on a few, but if it works as well as he thinks it will, elves will start looking like twins in a few years.
So, over the years, Santa has added technology to make his job easier, but his purpose is the same as it always was—to make kids all over the world smile on Christmas morning.
- This article was written by Dr. Mike Christensen and published in the Daily Miner and News, and Enterprise. Local Kenora News Publicatons (1998-2006)