Santa Exposed

Much has been made about the physics of Santa Claus, often calculating his requisite speed in Mach numbers normally reserved for experimental aircraft. I'm told these calculations are a regular exercise at engineering colleges. All these theories are brought to naught, however, by the lack of plausible answers to one question frequently asked by children:

What does he do at the houses with no fireplace?

Ours is such a house. If anyone managed to get down our chimney, they'd end up in our harvest-orange Chrysler furnace. (Yes, Chrysler made furnaces, too, about as well as they made cars.) Houses with fireplaces are now, I believe, the exception, rather than the norm.

So what does he do?

I have an answer: he goes through the attic. Not only that, but, as you'll see in this photographic evidence gathered a week before Christmas, the presents are already there.

This is troubling data, indeed. The presents are already there? A week in advance? Wrapped, and assembled neatly by the attic stairs? One can come to only two conclusions: either Santa visited early, and dropped off the presents, but didn't distribute them (rather unlikely from an efficiency standpoint) OR... Santa has outsourced delivery. Consider that systems are already in place for the timely delivery of packages to individual homes; Santa could simply send gifts by the truckload to major shipping hubs.

The gedankenexperiment ("thought experiment") prompts further questioning: What if Santa wasn't stuffing all the stockings in person, either? The so-called "Santa's Helper" theory would have us believe that local agents carry out the "last mile" of distribution, and we must reluctantly admit that it has merit.

So, then, does Santa distribute presents at all? Actually, this distributed distribution system makes the traditional delivery possible: Santa, in his old age, can still make several hundred, perhaps thousand, deliveries in person. One might theorize as to the how these recipients are chosen; perhaps only those on the "nice" list receive a visit from the old gent himself; perhaps visits are chosen for their high profile, or likeliness to be seen "in the act" by people that will perpetuate the Santa Claus mythos. This reduces the necessary speed of such an arrangement to a much more believable level, and gets around the problem of the reindeer burning up upon re-entry.

Whatever the case, these revelations neither confirm nor deny the existence of Santa Claus, but we believe make the theory much, much more plausible.

Just something that made me smile

Edited to add: A number of people have mentioned that they either can't see the video (in which case, go here) and an amazing number didn't realize that this is done with shadow puppets — you know, making shapes with your hands in front of a light. Those bunny ears are fingers.

A Little Christmas Cheer

Just for you, a live-on-location recording of "Jingle Bells" with Miss Fiona Kerr, accompanied by Deborah. It puts a smile on my face; it might put one on yours, too. :-)

Christmas Photos, Part 2

Out of the gloom, out of the fog, there arrived... in-laws.

Santa was in attendance. When Deborah and her siblings were little, they used to say, "Of course Santa is real! He's my Daddy!"

Aiden and Grandpa Renaud try out Aiden's new helicopter.

"Andy, quit taking pictures so we can play the game already..."
Actually, we were waiting on something/someone else before we could start, and I couldn't resist getting a shot of the identical poses.

Yum.

Puzzling.

Fiona shows Auntie Marty a picture she drew for her.

More puzzling.

We started a new tradition this year: When we finish the Christmas puzzle, we date the back of the last piece.

Christmas Photos, Part 1

The kids were just about jumping out of their skin with excitement.

Aiden watches one of his new books in action. Yeah, it's a book — and it comes with pop-out figures and a tiny little wind-up tractor that zooms around the pages on a little track.

Aunt Martha gets a puzzle...

Deborah, Fiona, and Aiden check out a very cool Narnia pop-up book from my sister Sharon.

No harm in letting Santa know what you'd like, eh Fiona?

Uncle Paul explains the proper function of thumb-sized Rock-em Sock-em Robots.

The cat got a rather exorbitant trip to the vet to get an abscess drained, but was in good spirits nonetheless...

Well, what would you give a 2-month-old, that she would genuinely appreciate?

O Christmas Tree...

My Aunt Martha is braver with her back than I am!

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

Children love to help, for varying values of "help"...

See? I'm on this side of the camera for once!

The cat very quickly figured out that "under the tree" was the one place people couldn't get him. Very handy when your playmates are three and five...

I actually only put up a little more than half of our tree. Otherwise, it's too big for our little living room.

One Christmas Down, One to Go

Our family seems to have gotten in the habit of having Christmases on multiple days, or on days other than the 25th of December. I've lost track of ho many times I've been flying on Christmas (no lines!) and exchanged presents the next day, instead.

Christmas 1 (Dec. 25th) went over wonderfully this year. The kids were just about bouncing out of their skin to put up their stockings, and calling out, "Is it time to get up yet?" scarcely half an hour after we put them to bed. Once it was time to get up, Fiona bounded up the ladder to our bed and so sweetly invited, "come have Christmas with us!" before crawling over to give me a backrub (both Fiona and I are totally backrub people). It was wonderful way to wake up.

Christmas 2 (Dec. 27th) starts in a few hours, with Deborah's parents and May having just arrived from an all-day drive from New Hampshire. I'm glad they made it: Our street is a wet sheet of ice, and a thick fog is covering most of Indiana and Ohio. They told us about following "Rudolph" — an 18-wheeler with glowing red taillights — nearly all the way across Ohio. All they could see were those red hazy dots amidst the gray. I've done nearly the same thing — I followed a truck at a crawl nearly all the way across Ohio in a blizzard after visiting Deborah up at Houghton in upstate New York one weekend.

Now, off to bed with me. As I told the kids, the sooner you go to sleep, the sooner it will be Christmas again!

Gingerbread in June

It was the weirdest idea for a party I'd ever heard of. Our friends wanted to know why we were doing it. Was it someone's birthday? Some event? Why gingerbread houses in June? We did it... just for the fun of it.

And fun it was, although there was a lot of work too. Case in point: If we invite 20 families, and 16 accept, we need materials for 16 gingerbread houses. There are 6 pieces per house, for a total of 96 pieces. That's a lot of gingerbread, folks. I went out and got larger bowls so we could make them three batches at a time, rather than one.

We cleared off the counters completely and set up five stations: two places to roll and cut dough; one to bake, one to cool, and one to store the finished pieces.

Now, the original plan was a cheery summer afternoon in the back yard, with drinks and tiki torches, and kids running around in the grass whenever they got a little too hyper on candy.

Hah.

That plan was scuttled by a thunderstorm the size of Iowa. Then, our supplier of large folding tables called to say he didn't think it was a good idea to bring them over in the rain, as he'd have to put them on an open trailer. Oh. Now what? So... we improvised. A few phone calls netted us promises of four card tables, and we'd just do it all inside. No problem! The slightly worrisome part there is that we'd invited upwards of 40 people. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but... our house isn't all that big. But we're all friends, right? It'll be cozy!

The adults were having a good time...

Fiona was helping Grandma Kerr...

...but the other kids didn't seem to be having as good a time as I thought they would.

I thought the kids would be all over the candy and the houses, but they were mostly milling about aimlessly, unsure of what they could do.

It was a time for drastic action.

It was time to break out THE KID ENTERTAINER OF DOOM!!!! BWA HAHAHHAHA...
No, wait, that's not right. I meant, the Cart, a.k.a. "Santa's Summer Sleigh."

Man, this thing is great for picking up girls! I had one under each arm for what seemed like an hour or two, just cruising around the island. They were laughing and screaming whenever I rolled up to the door and having a great time.

Eventually, though, my posterior, and the batteries that sit underneath said posterior, were reaching their limit. (I've discovered that you can tell how the battery is doing by checking to see if you can accelerate and use the turn signal at the same time. If you can't blink, you're low.) My passengers weren't too concerned about such things. We had "one last ride" several times, and then "OK, these will have to be short," and then, "really, last time." None of us cared — we were all having fun — but electricity really was in short supply.

"Can we have ONE MORE ride?"
"Well, I don't know. The invisible reindeer are getting pretty tired."
They just looked at me.
"It's almost out of juice."
They wanted to know what kind of juice it needed.
I tried again. "The batteries are low and it needs to recharge."
"So where's the charger? Can we have one more ride?"
"Will you help push when it stops moving?"
That, they understood.

They still excitedly clambered in for the slow, hundred-foot crawl back to the carport to plug in, though.

With the cart exhausted, they set out to answer another question I hadn't thought to ask: How many kids can you fit on a porch swing?

Start with, oh, five or so.

(Every now and then, you snap a photo, and look at it later, and you somehow realize, "This is going to be important later..." — perhaps as a sign of things to come, perhaps important for some other reason. This is one of those photos. It gives me hope and joy about the years ahead.)

He's not heavy, he's my brother... well, yeah, actually, he's heavy. Oof, get off!
Can you spot all eight kids?

Meanwhile, back inside, marvelous creations were taking shape:

Lots of creativity going on.

Maybe once the party is over, Deborah and I can make one, too!

Build, build, ooh, ah, chomp, chomp, chomp

I'm still catching up on my backlog of Christmas pictures.

Since we moved to California back in 1980, my family has been making graham cracker houses at Christmastime. This year, however, my mother-in-law got us a gingerbread house kit, complete with house-shaped cookie cutters and frosting tips. We thought is was overkill for everyone to build their own, so we just made two, and several people helped with each.

We had a professional cake decorator (my mother-in-law) on one team, and a professional graphic designer (moi) on the other, so I figured we were pretty even as far as artistic direction.

This is serious business, folks.

Deborah and Carolyn's finished house.

Isn't that a nice roof?

Paul and I acquit ourselves nicely, too, I think.

Yum!

Christmas

Stockings!

I like this picture of Paul. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's the slightly mischievious grin.

The house was full of energy and music.

Fiona with her Great-Grandma Renaud, singing together.

Handmade, hand dipped temptation. We know a family that, after we made these at their house, they gave it a new name: No Spit Candy. Apparently, Deborah's insistence that the powdered sugar would dissolve if you accidentally got a little saliva in there made the name stick.

We were to have 10 people in the house on Christmas day, so we tried to prepare as much of Christmas dinner ahead of time. My mother-in-law and I were peeling potatoes at 11 at night, and I was dreading the idea of chopping them all up. So, if necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is certainly the father. I remembered a Veg-O-Matic I had inherited from a yard sale, and repurposed a crisper drawer in the refrigerator to hold the cut potatoes. There are 26 potatoes in that drawer...

For me, yes?

It was a time for projects as much as presents. In addition to running a new electrical circuit to so that we could have a light in the attic (and other Shel Silverstien titles) my parents-in-law showed up with a bunk bed kit, and a new mattress, to boot! It took my FIL and I a few hours to put it together, but it looks really nice. Mattresses on the floor no more!