There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc…..

This means that 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 on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, it is no wonder that Rudolph's nose glows!! Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force

In conclusion, Santa is indeed a very magical man !!!

This is a non-commercial site that celebrates the magic of the Holiday season. Send a letter to Santa or download your favorite Christmas music. This site is all about Santa Claus and you can write a letter to Santa and he will return your email. That’s right, send a letter to Santa Claus and he will send a personalized letter back for free !!! This non-commercial holiday web site, appeals to children of all ages and their parents seeking online communication with Santa Claus and who are interested in Christmas-themed infotainment. Visitors to the St. Nick Web site can send their Christmas lists to Santa Claus and receive a personalized e-mails back from the “big guy”, play holiday trivia games, listen their favorite Christmas tunes, share their favorite traditions and recipes, learn about the magic of Santa's one-night trip around the world and more. With over 2 billion children worldwide, the St. Nick Web site provides an interactive forum for children from around the world to enjoy and experience the spirit of Christmas. This non-commercial Web site intends to rekindle the original spirit of community and giving for which the Internet once stood. Now in its eighth year of rekindling the spirit of Christmas over the Internet, www.saintnick.org received approximately one million hits per day last year in December with 35% of the traffic coming from children around the world.