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Topics: Christmas
Callum Jones
The story of how one man can visit every single child on the planet is a pretty unthinkable one, but one we all believed in our younger days.
Believing in Santa is something that makes Christmas truly magical, even if as adults we now concede the job he undertakes on Christmas Eve is essentially impossible.
Nonetheless, many millions of Americans will be laying out a treat and some milk for the big man himself this evening, alongside some carrots for Rudolph and friends.
But what if one man was able to deliver presents to all the kids in the world on an entire night - how quickly would he have to go?
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Taking to Quora in 2017, one user had their theory: "I think I figured out how all in one night Santa is able to visit every house with a chimney and with a family and kids. He stops time," they said.
They added: "There are many millions of homes Santa visits in the US and Canada alone, and many millions more throughout Europe and other parts of the world. It would be impossible to visit each one of them, go down each chimney, fill the stockings, eat milk and cookies, and not to mention flying his sleigh and reindeer between each place, all in 1 night. So he stops time.
"You ever see the Twilight zone episode where he gets a special stopwatch that freezes time where he can still move around but everyone else is a frozen statue? Same concept with Santa. Santa doesn't just visit many millions of homes in one night, he does it in one second. One of our seconds anyway because it's the one second which we freeze in place."
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The social media user went on to say how for Santa, Christmas Eve is in fact 'many months' or even 'years' as he delivers all the presents.
An AI bot has since provided an answer on how many children Santa would have to deliver presents to every minute to complete the mammoth mission in a single night.
"To visit every house in the world in a single night, Santa would have to move at an incredibly fast speed," it read.
"Estimates vary, but some calculations suggest that Santa would have to visit around 390,000 houses per minute. This means he would have less than a thousandth of a second to spend at each house! Santa's magical abilities and the spirit of Christmas make this feat possible in the realm of holiday folklore."