Santa is always portrayed as a rather plumb, jolly figure, but you always see him just before Christmas, and seldom after. It is possible, then, that Santa packs on the pounds before his sleigh ride around the world so that he can endure his Christmas Eve voyage. Kinda like a bear gaining weight before hibernation, Santa needs a lot of weight to not only keep him warm as he travels around the globe, but also because he will be burning so much energy delivering presents.
Why do I think post-Christmas Eve Santa is a lot trimmer than pre-Christmas Eve Santa?
To figure this out first keep in mind that research has shown that you burn approximately 0.11 calories going up stairs and 0.05 calories heading down.
Next, according to Wikipedia there are 1.9 billion (1,900,000,000) Christians in the world. If you take the average of 4 people per household, that would equate to 475 million (475,000,000) Christian households worldwide. For argument's sake let's say that 1/4 of those households are two-story and the other 3/4 are one story tall. That means that there are 118,750,000 two-story homes and 356,250,000 one-story tall homes.
The average flight of stairs is 16 per story and considering that Santa needs to go up to the roof and not just the top story, all two-story homes have the equivalent of 32 stairs and all one-story homes have the equivalent of 16 stairs.
Once inside, to get back out of the 118,750,000 two-story homes Santa would need to climb 3.8 billion (3,800,000,000) stairs. To get out of the one-story homes, Santa would also need to climb 5,700,000,000 (5.7 billion) stairs. Assuming he drops down the chimney, and doesn't climb down, we will not need to factor in the trip into the house.
Therefore Santa is climbing up the equivalent of 9.5 billion (9,500,000,000) stairs. At 0.11 calories per stair, Santa is burning 1.045 billion (1,045,000,000) calories. This does not include any calories burned while flying his sled, getting in and out of the sleigh or carrying Tickle-Me-Elmos.
Happy Holidays from Big12Hoops.com!
Evan Pfaff
Senior Editor
evan.pfaff@big12hoops.com
Twitter @MizzouHoops
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