So, as you sit there at Christmas, have you ever wondered why it is that Santa comes down the chimney? 

After all, the roof is hardly the best place to park a sleigh and assorted reindeer, and the narrow flues we have these days are hardly what you would call good access, when you think about it.  Let’s not even think about the issues brought up by Health and Safety!

Who is Santa?

Santa himself is a complex character, the result of the fusion of many myths.  He can be seen all the way back in Tudor times as the spirit or embodiment of Christmas cheer.  It is said that Christmas used to be the time at the middle of winter when you were able to look at your food supplies, and tell if you had enough to see you through, and if so a celebration was in order.  There are Germanic and Norse elements too, where the image of Odin, bearded and distributing gifts contributes much to our modern perception.

He wasn’t always dressed in red.  The image was often in green, an homage to the old gods, to the spirits of the woods and trees, the Green Man himself.  There is a myth, and it is just that, that Coca Cola with their ads had a hand in turning the green figure into a red one, but sadly for the conspiracy theorists, this story, and while amusing has no basis in reality.

Why does Santa come down the chimney?

Well, again this may include threads from the fact that the hearth was always a sacred place, the heart of the home.  Also, in the days where violence was more common, and leaving a door unbarred at night was a tad reckless, there had to be another way to allow a magical figure to enter and leave the house without compromising security, and that left only the smoke hole in the top of the roof that let the smoke out.

As houses changed with time, and the chimneys became enclosed and more efficient at removing smoke, so they shrank, as big chimneys squander much of the fire’s heat.  Then of course there are so many houses where the chimneys had shrunk to a tiny flue, just a small memory of the smoke hole, or even, horror of horrors, NO CHIMNEY AT ALL!

Nowadays, parents have a serious problem.  Children are a lot smarter these days and less willing to be fobbed off with ‘magic’ when it comes to the serious business of present delivery systems, and while Amazon is doing its best as a global delivery system to rival Santa, you as parents’ need to be one step ahead of the little dears.

We’ve got you covered

Fear not, because science is at hand to solve the problem to all this, how Santa can be in all the bedrooms in a single night and why it is important that children are all asleep, if only to preserve their parents’ sanity.  So, for you we would like to present the definitive scientific explanation.

On Christmas Eve, Santa exists as a quantum wave front travelling around the world at the crucial time.  This enables him to cover every bedroom as the relevant time line travels around the world.  The reason that you must be asleep when he comes is that if you see him then in accordance with Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and quantum instability, the Santa wave front collapses, leaving your parents there instead!