On the surface, it may appear that Father Christmas (aka Santa Claus) has one of the best jobs in the world. He only has to work one day a year (let’s face it, his elves do most of the real work in the off season), he gets to eat loads of free mince pies and he’s single handedly responsible for making millions and millions of children (and adults) happy.
Granted, he does have to live at the North Pole – and after the week of cold and snow we’ve had in the UK, I certainly don’t envy that – and he has to squeeze himself up and down sooty chimneys, but on the whole, I’d say Santa C. has it pretty easy.
But an article in this week’s Daily Telegraph has me thinking twice. It turns out, with all his travelling, eating and gift giving, Santa is one busy man on Christmas Eve. In fact, he makes the rest of us look like amateurs.
For example:
- Overall, Father C. racks up around 212,030,000 miles of business travel in a single night (I hope he carries a frequent flyer card), making more than 233,000,000 stops. Needless to say, the average UK commuter doesn’t even come close.
- To keep his energy up, Santa consumes somewhere in the neighbourhood of 71,764,000,000 calories from his mince pie and sherry intake. While the rest of us fret over those calorie-filled canapés and cocktails at the office party, Mr. Claus is racing round the planet on a massive sugar high.
- When it comes to gifts, most of us spend about £10 on a secret Santa gift for the office. Santa, however, has a budget that puts ours to shame. Assuming he spends just over £40 per child, he would have to spend £30,093,000,000 on gifts – the equivalent of Costa Rica’s GDP.
And that’s not counting delivery expenses, which, if you take into account the weight of the presents, the salaries of the reindeer hauling the sleigh and that little bit extra for guaranteed delivery, are likely nearing the amount of the UK national debt.
Well, what do you think – is all of that worth 364 days of holiday a year?
Happy holidays from Euroffice!
