With the holiday party season starting up in earnest, you’d better get ready – and we don’t mean by putting on some fancy earrings and a Christmas sweater. You’ll also need some intellectual ammunition, some tidbits and bon mots to dispense over champagne and cookies. So all month long, we’ll be bringing you daily factlets for just such use, plucked from our collection of books, magazines, and other stuff. Today’s archival tidbit comes from, appropriately, Cocktail Party Cheat Sheets:
Many children figure out the nonexistence of Santa Claus when they begin to contemplate the enormity of his task. And indeed, Santa would need some rocket-powered reindeer: Assuming the world contains two billion households and Santa visits every one over the course of 24 hours, he would have to travel at a rate of 8,000,000 meters per second, leaving him precious little time to dip cookies in milk.
Comments (7)
Comment
- subscribe /
- give a gift /
- terms of service /
- about /
- contact us /
- write for us /
- ad info /
- subscriber services /
- press /
- privacy policy /
- rss /
© 2012 Mental Floss Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mental Floss is a registered trademark owned by Felix Dennis. mentalfloss.com is a trademark owned by Felix Dennis.
Disclaimer: All submissions made to mental_floss become the property of Mental Floss Inc and may be used without further permission by the submitter and without compensation to the submitter. If you do not agree to these terms, please do not submit anything to mental_floss.
My nephew decided one year, when faced with that same question, that Santa is a time traveller who stops time to deliver presents. (Are YOU gonna dispute that kind of genius from a five-year-old? Yeah, me neither…)
posted by Lyssa on 12-4-2006 at 2:23 pm
To me, the bigger mystery is, if Santa eats all the cookies and drinks all the milk left for him, when, where and how does he go to the bathroom?
posted by Sheldon Siegel on 12-4-2006 at 3:03 pm
shirley temple once said:
“I stopped believing in Santa Claus when I was six. Mother took me to see him in a department store and he asked for my autograph.”
posted by me on 12-4-2006 at 3:45 pm
He’s like an astronaut…he wears a diaper.
posted by Marika on 12-4-2006 at 4:30 pm
Shame on you, Mental Floss!
Enormity means ‘great evil,’ not simply ‘large in size.’
Tsk tsk tsk.
posted by Thomas on 12-5-2006 at 12:08 pm
Marika said: “He’s like an astronaut…he wears a diaper. ”
hehe the first astronauts didnt wear diapers. it makes for one of the best parts of The Right Stuff.
posted by Zounds Padang on 12-5-2006 at 12:17 pm
I thought santa only gave gifts to kids whose parents couldn’t afford it. I figured santa didn’t visit me cuz I heard my parents arguing about how to put toys together. Plus, I appreciate it more that my parents bought the toys.
posted by Niki on 12-5-2006 at 10:47 pm