How Many Calories Will Santa Burn Tonight?

Happy holidays to all!

Santa is always portrayed as a rather plumb, jolly figure, but you always see him just before Christmas, and seldom after. It is possible then that Santa builds weight before his sleigh ride around the world so that he can endure his Christmas Eve voyage. Kinda like a bear gaining weight before hibernation, Santa needs a lot of weight to not only keep him warm as he travels around the globe, but also because he will be burning so much energy delivering presents.

Why do I think post-Christmas Eve Santa is a lot trimmer than pre-Christmas Eve Santa?

In a previous article we discussed the number of calories burned by walking up and down stairs. If you remember you burn approximately 0.11 calories going up stairs and 0.05 calories heading down.

Now according to Wikipedia there are 1.9 billion (1,900,000,000) Christians in the world. If you take the average of 4 people per household, that would equate to 475 million (475,000,000) Christian households worldwide. For argument’s sake let’s say that 1/4 of those households are 2 story and the other 3/4 are one story tall. That means that there are 118,750,000 two-story homes and 356,250,000 one-story tall homes.

The average flight of stairs is 16 per story and considering that Santa needs to go up to the roof and not just the top story, all two-story homes have the equivalent of 32 stairs and all one-story homes have the equivalent of 16 stairs.

Once inside, to get back out of the 118,750,000 two-story homes Santa would need to climb 3.8 billion (3,800,000,000) stairs. To get out of the one-story homes, Santa would also need to climb 5,700,000,000 (5.7 billion) stairs. Assuming he drops down the chimney, and doesn’t climb down, we will not need to factor in the trip into the house.

Therefore Santa is climbing up the equivalent of 9.5 billion (9,500,000,000) stairs. At 0.11 calories per stair, Santa is burning 1.045 billion (1,045,000,000) calories. This does not include any calories burned while flying his sled, getting in and out of the sleigh or carrying Tickle-Me-Elmos.

Since the average suggested consumption is 2000 calories per day, Santa burns enough calories for 522,500 days in one evening (and you thought your workout was strenuous!)

From this one can only assume that post-Christams Eve Santa is considerably skinnier than the Santa you see in shopping malls and photography stores.

Have any other ideas on Santa? Leave a comment below.

Keep sporting!
- Who’s In First