I want everyone to think back. Back to when you believed in Santa. Has anyone ever really heard Santa? Have you ever really wanted to hear him and you tricked yourself into actually hearing him? When I was little I actually heard bells.

I never believed in Santa. I remember as a very young (3ish) child, the neighbor would call and pretend he was Santa. I would wait until after he hung up and laugh with my mom. I never let on, cause I wanted the presents.
My Aunt would shake her car keys in the other room late at night when I was in bed on Xmas eve.
I have always been a skeptic.

When I was younger I believed and once I though i saw somthing like a sleigh flying past my window, amazing what too many sweets and and overactive imagination can do

I don't think I ever really believed. It just seemed a little odd to me. How much can one man eat and drink before he's a serious danger to himself and other people?

Lmao! Nice.

I used to, and I put out "reindeer" feed, it turns out my dog ate it...but I still believed. Eh. I don't anymore. It's impossible. It would be possible if you were thinking of the time zones and such but....a fat man doing all of that in one night. Nah.

I also believed in Santa before but not anymore. I never heard any bells or saw any flying sleigh. I don't know why but I was not disappointed when I learned that he is not true. I don't see anything wrong for the children to believe in him because he reminds them to be good and to do good. He also shows them love w/c the children should imitate.

Ouch...that sounds like a pretty depressing childhood...I knew he wasn't real when I was six ish...but i still hoped, maybe until I turned like eleven...good times

i dont think i ever tricked myself into hearing or seeing him.....but my sister made me believe that she saw him...she said she saw his boots...and i beleived her.....but i think she said that to make me believe in him

I have never believed in Santa. My family never did anything to make me believe in santa. We have always celebrated Christmas differently than you Americans. I do wish to know one thing however. Have you ever heard of the Lapp Shamans?
The Shamans came from the extreme north of Europe. They could travel over the frostscape by foot or by sleigh, which would have been drawn by, Yes, you have guessed well, a reindeer. They wore fur coats which were typically red and trimmed with white fur and they were known for their jolly nature. They would bring gifts (Not like the modern types of winter holiday gifts) to the townspeople, specifically, the children to raise the spirits during the darkest winter months. I just believed that I should tell you this, but...if you want a stranger Santa-related tale I have a better one...from my homeland.

-Lin

I was never 100% sure of Santa, but I figured 'Why rock the boat' and kept right on believing until one day I found a present addressed 'From Santa' in my parent's closet.

Santa was real as far as someone who cared about you brought you gifts to make you happy. He just was not the cartoon character that you had been led to believe in, but the important thing, the love, was all real.

Love? Come on it's commercialist s***! I'd rather have a family that was able to listen and give an honest reply than a double-speaking ATM.

It was a tradition with my two children that on Christmas Eve we would pour out a glass of sherry and leave a mince pie for Father Christmas and a carrot for Rudolph before they went up to bed. It was my job to drink the sherry and eat the pie making sure that some some crumbs were left on the plate and also eat the carrot leaving "Rudolphs teeth marks" in the bit that was left. It was very special for them when on Christmas morning we all went down stairs and the happy little faces when they saw the " evidence that Father Christmas had been. I'm 50 now and my children are 25 and 10 but I can look back on those memories of Christmas's past and enjoy them. Ok you are telling a little white lie to your children but at that age the Father Christmas story makes something a little more magical to them, and to parents when they are older, memories to look back on.

I don't know why but I never believed in "Santa" for some reason, even though I did leave cookies out when I was little.
I'm sure my father ate them. My sister and I made two batches. Surely he couldn't have eaten all of it.
St. Nick is real Sorry, past tense: was real.

I never believed in Santa, either. There's something scary about the thought of an old fat man breaking and entering every childs house in the world...

I am a Granddad who took over the job and the costume from my father. I weigh 350 lbs and have a White beard. I enjoy going to community gatherings and handing out gifts. When the bigger kids look for my pillow I show them I need none.
My legs cant work the way they used to so I have handed the job to my one son.
Three generations of Santa coming to our home on X-mas eve? Of course he is REAL!

^



I believed when I was little...but I never heard or saw anything...

I believed, obsessively so. When I got older and confronted with the whole "grow up, youre too big to believe in him" thing, I was so desperate to believe in him that I convinced myself that the man (my father) putting presents under to tree was Santa "undercover". So, i never really saw or heard anything but believed i did. I guess that counts for something.

I, being the ever gullible person that I am, believed in Santa until I was about eight. I remeber how on Christmas eve my sister would always tell me she heard bells on the rooftop, and I could never hear them. Then one year I didn't get what I wanted for Christmas and I stopped believing in Santa. So sad.

I remember seeing "elves" running around the corner of my living room into the hallway. They were diffrent colors and 6"tall.

I also imagined that i saw a resturant in the sky shaped like a hamburger
This was after watching an episode of ALF

Why do children have such crazy imaginations?

I think Santa Claus is a strong symbol, as real as it can get without being real. He doesn't exist in person.

Consider the following:

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) 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.

3) 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.

4) 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, who is invariably described as overweight.

On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that 'flying reindeer' (see point ..1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal
amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.

We need 214,200 reindeer. 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.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft
re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.

In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.

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 - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.