Jane Embury, on behalf of Wrightstyle, wishes everyone Festive best wishes.
It’s been a strange old year, and a year that all of us will be glad to see the back of.
It’s been a year in which everything changed – from the way we work to how we socialise. It has been a year in which the world changed, and most of us changed along with it.
But not all of us, because there’s one man who never changes. Santa Claus.
He has to deliver to over 500 million children on Christmas Eve, with a sleigh that’s estimated must weigh over 300,000 tons.
On land, ordinary reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. So the eight flying reindeer do the job of about 1,633,333 of the “non flying” variety.
Exercise
It’s a massive exercise in supply chain management, to ensure that every child gets what they want, without triggering complaints back to the North Pole.
It’s an exercise that starts with collecting gift requests, usually by letter. Of course, children now can write to Santa direct via the Post Office.
He also has to make sure that every child’s record is accurate, that whether they’ve been naughty or nice.
Santa’s list of “naughty” and “nice” children has its roots in Belgium and the Netherlands. Their version of Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, keeps a similar list.
But if most of us this year have been stuck at home with a too-tempting biscuit jar, spare a thought for poor Santa. Already overweight, Christmas Eve is no time for dieting.
Assuming each household leaves out two chocolate biscuits for Santa, he would eat 374 billion calories. That’s 33,000 tons of sugar, and 151,000 tons of fat. If Santa could run an eight-minute mile, he would have to run for 109,000 years to burn off those calories.
And it’s not just Christmas Eve when hard work is required. His elves have to work right up to deadline to make sure that every present is manufactured.
North Pole
Incidentally, his decision to base his manufacturing facility at the North Pole rather than Devizes was a sensible one. The region is exempt from government taxes and regulations.
Santa actually is St Nicholas, a Christian saint born around 280 A.D. in modern day Turkey. He’s therefore had a lot of time to develop his systems and processes.
But our modern depiction of Santa is the work of the Coca-Cola Company, and their advertisements from the 1930s by the illustrator Haddon Sundblum.
One of the good things about this year is the support we have given and received, from friends, family and work colleagues.
We have also seen that positive spirit from suppliers and customers: a very real sense of supporting each other through something that none of us could have foreseen.
With a vaccine on the horizon, 2021 promises to be a better year. On that note of optimism, from all of us at Wrightstyle, have a safe and happy Christmas!
Photo by Duffy Brook on Unsplash
