Ohio Chatter DEV

mtrulz

So many damn kids on here. I didn't know....?

mtrulz

ytownfootball wrote: WTF you sayin'

Bah Humbug

tk421

Little Danny wrote: Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus

Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897

We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O'Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus?Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!!

Bah Humbug.

iuhoosier11

justincredible wrote:
j_crazy wrote: when I was like 8 I asked mom why there were presents under the tree on like december 14th.

"because I put them there after I wrapped them."

what about santa.

"fake."
I don't know why but this made me laugh my ass off.

No kidding....a couple of these stories have me laughing my ass off!

ernest_t_bass

justincredible wrote: SANTA DOESN'T EXIST?!!?!?!?!

Gee, post #2... that didn't take very long... :rolleyes:

BigAppleBuckeye

I always enjoyed this one ...

The Physics of Santa Claus

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each).

Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, and assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimnye, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course we know to be false but for the purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking aabout .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 punds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (refer to point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal load, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entereing the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per SECOND, EACH! In short, hey will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousanths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal* forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

SQ_Crazies

^HAHAHAHA

Apple

BigAppleBuckeye wrote: I always enjoyed this one ...

The Physics of Santa Claus...

FAIL!!!

This theory does not take into account that it is magic.

Logic doesn't enter the equation... kind of like the way females tend to be.

Rotinaj

I think I was about tree fiddy.

pmoney25

Around 9 I believe

This past weekend we took our kids(Age 3 and 3 Months) to see Santa. It was amazing to see the joy my son had(3 year old) when he saw Santa and was able to ask him for a Blue Racecar.

SQ_Crazies

pmoney25 wrote: Around 9 I believe

This past weekend we took our kids(Age 3 and 3 Months) to see Santa. It was amazing to see the joy my son had(3 year old) when he saw Santa and was able to ask him for a Blue Racecar.

Oh how I miss life being that simple.

zambrown

The summer I turned 8. We were stopped at a red light and out of the blue, I looked at my mom and said, "Santa isn't real, is he." Of course she was stunned, given the timing and all (July) but gave the "Santa is more a feeling than a person" speech and I still believe she was right. Santa is a symbol of the spirit of giving (rather than receiving), so in that sense, I still believe in Santa.

NNN

zambrown wrote: The summer I turned 8. We were stopped at a red light and out of the blue, I looked at my mom and said, "Santa isn't real, is he." Of course she was stunned, given the timing and all (July) but gave the "Santa is more a feeling than a person" speech and I still believe she was right. Santa is a symbol of the spirit of giving (rather than receiving), so in that sense, I still believe in Santa.

That reminds me of me being young and asking my dad if Darth Vader was real. He choked me, then cut off my hand.

Basically, it was "No, Darth Vader isn't real, but me messing up my own son in the same way sure makes it seem that way!"

fan_from_texas

I don't ever recall thinking he actually existed. In my family, it was always kind of a big joke--we stayed up late on Christmas eve trying to catch our parents pretending to be Santa.

Mulva

mtrulz wrote:
Bah Humbug

tk421 wrote:
Bah Humbug.

Santa may not be real, but a coke sure is. And you both blew a perfect opportunity to be owed one.

MrPoke

I was 5 I think.

Found some presents from santa while I was snooping around a week or so before christmas. My mom claimed that he brought some early because he had so many extra this year, I didn't believe it. So on christmas eve of that year I stayed up late and put tape on the top of the doors, since we didn't have a fireplace my mom claimed that santa would use the door. In the morning I saw that the tape was still taped at the top of the door and kinda figured it out on my own. Ruined for myself.

noreply66

I can't remember

4cards

...I think I was 7 & found the toys stashed in my parents bedroom.

GOONx19

Nick Mangold delivers my presents.

rookie_j70

i was 8

vball10set

for those of you who say you never believed--I feel sorry for ya'....anyway,I was 9 years old,and I was really bummed when I found out-BUT,since I had six younger sibs,I could enjoy their believing,which took a lot of the sting out of it--Merry Christmas!!!

krambman

I was probably in second grade, so around 8 or 9. I had to continue to pretend to believe longer than that though because I had a little sister and we didn't want to spoil it for her.

My parents always pulled off Santa very well though. My dad had a Santa suit we never knew about, and every year a week or so after Christmas my parents would have pictures of Santa putting out stockings at the foot of our bed on Christmas Eve (we always, and actually still do, wake up to filled stockings at the foot of our beds - I'm 24 and she's 21 now). They would say that they just took a picture of us sleeping on Christmas and didn't see Santa until the pictures were developed. Also, they would put gifts under the tree throughout the month as they were wrapped, but on Christmas morning there were always a lot of new presents, wrapped always in paper with Santa on it, that we hadn't seen before. My dad always wrapped the Christmas gifts, so the tags on our gifts from our parents were in his hand writing, but the Santa gifts (I learned later) were in my mom's. There were also candy canes on the tree which weren't there before. Most of the cookies we left out for Santa were eaten, the glass of milk would be nearly empty, and the carrots we left for his reindeer would be gone too. For several years after we stopped believing in Santa my parents would still do all of his stuff just because they had fun doing it and didn't care they we knew it was them. They aren't quite as hard core about it anymore, although we still get stockings in the morning, they still put candy canes on the tree while we're sleeping, and we still get a gift or two from Santa. I'm sure they can't wait to have grandkids to help do Santa with again.

Heretic

A few years after I graduated from college and moved out on my own.

Due to inclimate weather, I was unable to visit my parents for the holiday, so like always on Christmas Eve, I set out cookies and stuff before going to bed. When I woke up, the cookies were still there and....no presents had been placed anywhere in my apartment. It was the saddest day of my life.

krambman

Heretic wrote: A few years after I graduated from college and moved out on my own.

Due to inclimate weather, I was unable to visit my parents for the holiday, so like always on Christmas Eve, I set out cookies and stuff before going to bed. When I woke up, the cookies were still there and....no presents had been placed anywhere in my apartment. It was the saddest day of my life.

It wasn't because there was no Santa, but rather because you're apartment didn't have a chimney.

dont_belong

I think I was like 5 when my older cousin told me. Never really looked at Christmas the same after that, and it was not a pretty site for him when my aunt found out that he told me.

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