So Santa has this massive operation going at the North Pole. He’s got a huge factory, with hundreds of elves in his employ. The amount of product said elves produce would make even the largest toy manufacturer look like an amateur.
He has reindeer who can fly.
IIRC, to deliver his product, the Big Guy travels faster than the speed of light in order to get to every child’s house world wide…a task which must be completed in 24 hours.
The guy lands on, then gets in and out of billions of homes undetected each Christmas Eve.
The man is–literally–immortal.
…and yet you’re prepared to call off Christmas because of…WEATHER?
Sorry, Mr. Claus…that doesn’t square. I suspect you were just looking for an excuse to take the day off.
That’s silly. Several times the speed of sound, but not even close to the speed of light.
He doesn’t visit the homes of most Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, etc. children. He also doesn’t visit the home of bad kids (he doesn’t do the coal thing anymore). And due to different time zones, he has about 31 hours to work with.
According to an article in the Huffington Post (link below)…he needs to travel 76 per cent of the speed of light to get it done in 12 hours. Allowing that he gets a little more than double that time due to the time zone situation…I’m guessing he would need to travel at about 29 per cent of the speed of light----about 53,900 miles per second—to get the job done.
The point is, regardless of what his speed needs to be, ole Kris’ capabilities should have been no match for a little weather. Thus, we are left to the conclusion that in reality, ole Mr. K. Kringle is something of a weakling.
Not to mention, as others have posted elsewhere, his attitude toward Rudolph (at least in the TV special), was less than admirable.
I think the way to make it make sense is to have it be a magical fog. There is precedent in that universe.
Sure, he’s now friends with the Winter Warlock. But maybe that’s it. He normally keeps it fog-free for take-off. But something happened. Something stopped him. Or something else created bad weather. Sam does mention it being some huge snowstorm, as if it affected the whole world.
All we need now is a sequel where Santa and Rudolph set off to find out what’s gone wrong, with Santa very worried about his friend, after seeing the storm so bad everywhere. Oh, and it turns out that it’s not just Rudolph’s glow, but there’s some magic in it that helped clear the fog.
Have we ruled out the possibility that Santa did it just to make the awkward fawn feel special?
Oh, and Santa doesn’t deliver worldwide*, only to those in the US and Netherlands. Other children are handled by his colleagues Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Kriskringle, Old Man Winter, and so on.
*Well, aside from a handful of expat kids, but he probably has a reciprocity deal with the other Oldfathers for them anyway.
In Norway Julenissen shows up in person on Christmas eve and spends a minimum of 10 seconds on each child. He only has about three hours to accomplish this task. There are approximately 250 000 children in the right age range to care about this visit. Now that’s impossible even ignoring the travel time.
According to the show it is a “magic sleigh.” With magic, more is possible. But magic may have its limitations, weather possibly being somehow one of them.
If Santa really wanted “to take the day off,” he wouldn’t have proposed the Rudolph solution.
