Taking photographs of youngsters making their visits to Santa Claus is always a sought-after task in the newspaper business, because you never really know what might happen when hyper-excited kids get a chance to actually meet the Jolly Old Elf face-to-face.  There are hundreds of classic stories involving such visits, including the sudden outburst of breakfast oatmeal during the recitation of the gift list, unexpected beard pulls and the most feared sudden rush of dampness into the Clausian lap when the thrill proves to be too much.

 

Kids have always had questions about Santa and Christmas Eve, like how the reindeer are able to fly so far, and how Santa is able to deliver so many presents in one night, and why the Santa we saw last week looks so different from the one we saw today.  These weighty queries have persisted down through the years, so much so that I decided to make a somewhat scientific study of the potential answers.

 

One needs to be a bit careful when answering these questions, however, since even the youngest toddlers now seem to be equipped with electronic devices that can access live feeds from Bulgarian State Television or give you the current temperature at the Martian equator.  So that means that they have access to information that is as good or better than yours when it comes to looking things up on the Internet®.

 

But I have one advantage, in that I still have some contacts in the defense industry that will tell me some things relative to these mysteries (though certainly not all).  The time question seems to be the easiest, when one becomes aware of a phenomenon called “North Pole Chronology,” which exists only in and around the immediate proximity of Santa and Mrs. Claus.  That means, my black ops source says, that North Pole Time is whatever time it says it is on Santa’s watch, wherever he is.  So while the overnight delivery of toys to the whole world would be impossible for those of us stuck in ordinary time, it is a mere good eight hour work day for Santa, his fliegende elfen (flying elves) and the eight tiny reindeer.

 

In another part of the secret scientific forest, a different source explained the many different appearances Santa may present this way:  “G-forces.”  It seems that while Santa has control over the passage of time, it still requires incredibly high rates of speed to cover the distances involved.  Think of films you might have seen involving military pilots or astronauts undergoing flight training, where the forces of gravity pull the tissue and muscles of their faces into wildly distorted shapes as the speed increases.  Depending on the time it takes to reach a certain destination, Santa may very well seem taller, or shorter, or just different, but he eventually regains his normal shape.  It affects the reindeer, too, but they remain invisible at most locations, and the elves usually look that way anyway, so no problem either way.

 

Getting access to the “Naughty or Nice” list sends a shiver down the spines of even the deepest deep cover agents.  “The Book” as it is called a the North Pole, is a computer program protected by so many mystic polar firewalls as to be considered “unhackable” by even the most proficient cyber spies.  And, as yet another source informs me, any attempt to do so results in the perpetrator being placed on the PNL, the Permanent Naughty List, which is…not good.

 

So let that be a lesson to you, little electronically savvy Timmy and Tina.  The Claus is out there, he watches, and he’s got a list.

 

Stay on the toy side, my friends.