How Does Santa Get to Every Chimney?

We are proud to be the Twin Cities’ leading heating and air conditioning company. We service and install thousands of HVAC units each year both residentially and commercially. Naturally, we seeĀ a lot of chimneys. This causes us to wonder just how Santa Claus could get down each and every one of them on Christmas Eve.

Have a little fun with us this time fo year and enjoy learning just how ole Saint Nick gets around:

  • There are approximately 2 billion children on Earth. An estimated 15% of them hang stockings and leave cookies for Santa. With an average of 3.5 children per household, one can estimate that there are roughly 100 million homes for Santa Claus to try and visit… assuming each household has at least one boy or girl on the “nice” list.
  • Taking time zones into account, Santa has 31 hours to visit all of them. This equates to about 850 visits per second.
  • By evenly distributing 100 million households across the land area of the world, we can assume that there is an average of 2/3 mile to travel between each visit.
  • From there, we can extrapolate to say that Santa’s sleigh must travel roughly 600 miles per second (not per hour!) Perhaps this explains why it’s so rare to see him in action!
  • Lastly, we shift the focus to Rudolph and his team. Assuming an average gift weight of two pounds, Santa’s sleigh must weigh nearly 400,000 metric tons. Your average reindeer can tug about 300 pounds. Aside from being able to fly, Santa’s reindeer are also magically strong!

Happy Holidays from all of us at Owen’s Companies!