Henrietta Hay's Column

"The Grinch hated Christmas!

The whole Christmas season!

Now, please don't ask why.

No one quite knows the reason....

But I think that the most likely reason of all

May have been that his heart was two sizes too small?"

Probably every American kid from 8 to 80 has memorized those words written by Dr. Seuss back in 1957.

I was feeling a lot like the Grinch myself in early December, but my friends told me to knock it off and get with it. So I decided to research Santa Claus.

In my less sentimental moments, I have always wondered about Santa's remarkable trip, but I never bothered to do the math. Now, however, we have the Internet with its endless numbers of intellectual doodlers studying such matters. We find that the Grinch's fairy tale adventures aren't nearly as amazing as those of the other, much older, Santa.

Some anonymous mathematician investigated the huge work output Santa manages to handle one night each year. There are 2 billion children in the world, but since Santa doesn't traditionally handle Muslim Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to about 378 million. At 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

Santa Claus has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth. This works out to 822.6 visits per second, which gives him roughly 1/1000 of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, have his milk and cookies, get back up the chimney, hop in his sleigh and move on to the next house.

As today's younger generation would say, "Awesome."

All that speed should have jump-started my Christmas spirit but no such luck. My friend the philosopher said that if I act as though I have it, pretty soon it will come. I tried Mall hopping one day and instead of finding spirit, I ended up trying to figure out why there are so many Santas wandering around. I went back to researching the Internet.

Assuming one small toy per kid, the payload on the sleigh would be roughly 321,300 tons, plus Santa who is slightly overweight. Donder and Blitzen and their co-workers can't do the job, especially since they are now over 150 years old. It would take 214,200 physically fit flying reindeer.

These figures are based on the premise that there is only one Santa Claus. A thousand Santas (1 kilosanta) or a million Santas (a megasanta) working in parallel could make it work. Santa is not dead. He is distributed. Ah ha. That explains it.

I would suggest that you do not show these figures to your children, although they have probably already read them on Internet.

There was one more thing I needed to try to get rid of the Grinch's influence-laughter.

Another anonymous E-mail news flash tells me that today's global challenges have necessitated some restructuring and downsizing at the North Pole. The partridge will be retained, but the pear tree never turned out to be the cash crop expected and will be replaced by a plastic hanging plant.

The two turtledoves are not cost effective. Also, their romance during working hours could not be condoned so they will be terminated. The four calling birds will be replaced by an automated voice mail system with call waiting. Nine ladies dancing have always been an odd number. They will be phased out as the individuals grow older and no longer can do the steps. Eleven pipers piping and twelve drummers drumming constitute a simple case of the band getting too big. They will be replaced by a string quartet.

I finally found Christmas. I always do. The tree is up, the gingerbread house baked, the gifts wrapped, the Christmas music dug out of the closet. Sure enough, when you get on with the traditions, it comes.

The Grinch found it too.

"...he hadn't stopped Christmas from coming!

It came!

Somehow or other, it came just the same....

Well in Whoville they say - The Grinch's small heart

Grew three sizes that day. "

Merry Christmas.