Fradam

A chance question the other day made me wonder where Boxing Day came from. The notion of a public holiday for boxing (as old and respected a sport it is), did not… quite… seem right (although as mentioned, a public holiday for the sake of eating is not unheard of). So I endeavoured to research it a little and find the root cause. Someone tried to convince me that in drinking cultures, the amount of contact one had with in-laws on Christmas day often led to a high amount of tension that needed a means of release. A day off could either be used to partake, or to recover if participants were eager beavers and had got into a tension-relieving jousting match on Christmas day itself. Another explanation I heard was that the generosity of Santa was causing too many accidents in homes with young children due to an excess of wrapping paper and boxes left lying around in the middle of hallways, and that a practical solution was to have a day off so that the whole family could rid themselves of the plague of excess boxes once and for all. A less cheery cause could be the notion that people in general have poor present selection, and enough people spent the day after Christmas returning their boxes to the stores whence they came, in search of something better in tune with themselves. A final theory was the rumour that some people like to wear boxes on their head, and this fine appreciation of cardboarded headware led to a public holiday being declared in honour of it in the Commonwealth.

I have since confirmed that every one of these theories is false.

In particular the last one, since that was my theory.

Having said that, the part about it relating to the Commonwealth is correct. Boxing Day is celebrated in majority-Christian Commonwealth nations (e.g. Australia!), and is generally based upon the idea of giving gifts to members of society less fortunate; i.e. it was a tool of the class entrenchment of those times. Allegedly, if Christmas was for giving gifts to ’social equals’, than those below would be bestowed upon with gifts the day after. Of course, no gifts could be returned in the opposing direction, as that would subtly imply that those below were on par with those above, and such ideas would have been considered quite terrible.

Beyond that, there were quite a few different folk roots - for example, this has immediate hints of Saturnalia, a Roman festival which was renowned for role reversal. It’s not clear really which one could have basis in fact though, so I suppose it could be considered immaterial.

So there you have it: the origins of Boxing day, in a box. I like the gift giving aspect of it (more public holidays to give people gifts is an awesome idea), but dislike the enforcement of the class distinctions that existed in those societies. Equality is important.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”

An oldie, but still good…

Did you know?
1) 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.

2) 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 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.

3) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, 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 the sleigh, jump down the chimney, 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 purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 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, 3,000 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.

4) 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 pounds. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, 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 - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths 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.

In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s probably not in a good state now.

Merry Christmas all

One of my Christmas presents (yes, near 6 months ago now!), was the acclaimed Riftwar saga from Raymond E. Feist — thanks Dave! The first in the series, the Magician is considered by many to be one of the finest fantasy reads of our time. I think I first heard of it when I was about 8; my eldest brother would have been reading Feist and encouraging me to get into it as well, having already set my feet upon the path of medieval literature with the world of Tolkien. This universe, filled with a myriad of amazing creatures and characters, drew me in, intoxicating me with its lore until I had searched far and wide (well, Warringah Library) for every book written about it. Bad idea; the Silmarillion kinda killed it for me. Yet, the idea of becoming a wizard was certainly one I had speculated upon.

Engaging Eddings only served to exacerbate that desire, as I encountered a boy who was only a wee bit older than me growing to learn about sorcery. Something about these lands filled with magic attracted me; I wasn’t sure what it was either. More than just the casual urge to turn a brother into a toad when the occasion suited, the idea of being able to alter the natural world seemed rather appealing.

Now, as I’ve grown older, such wishes have lain dormant, quietly being suppressed by the dusts of school and other non-wizardly things. So, receiving Riftwar for Christmas, began another saga of longing for a magical life. Reading another story of a boy-turned-magician brought to the surface thoughts and dreams long thought forgotten. As a result, I’ve decided my calling in life has been made. I will enter Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and become a wizard!

Wish me luck!

There are two questions commonly asked of me around this time of the year:

1. Fradam, how did you get so tall!?

2. Fradam, why don’t you celebrate Christmas like everyone else?

The answer to at least one of these questions is simple: drink lots of milk.

The other question however, is vastly more complex, primarily arising from most people being aware that I am a Christian, yet don’t seem too big on what many suppose to be the biggest Christian celebration around. But how Christian is Christmas? On a purely aesthetic level, yes, they share many of the same letters, but it is a bit more than that

As a Christian, I believe in what is in the Bible: which Christmas is not. Surprised? I hope not! Christmas is an amalgamation of many different cultures’ celebrations: Saturnalia, Sol Invictus, Yule, mid-winter night and the winter solstice. Between these, glory was given to the Roman Gods Saturn and Sol, the Syrian God Elah-Gabal, the Persian God Mithras and the Norse Gods Thor and Odin. It’s promotion into the Christian world was fuelled by Catholicism and the merging of pagan practices into less pagan equivalents. This is not particularly new knowledge — there was a lot of rioting and fighting about this in England and the US in the past few hundred years.

Ofcourse, that is what Christmas is technically defined to have originated from, but is that what Christmas is? Many would argue that Christmas is what you make of it, and that it means whatever you want it to mean — it can be a religious thing, it can be a secular thing, it can be a family thing, it can be a communal thing. Not everyone celebrates it the same way, and yet all are valid, right?

With my family, we take advantage of the fact that nobody is at work and can actually spend a degree of time with each other. It is not a religious acknowledgement of Christ’s supposed birth day. There’s rarely a tree. No candy cane, or stockings. It is simply time spent with those closest, those that are loved the most, with the joy of giving. Is that a form of Christmas? Well… considering the above thoughts, I suppose it is. Might not be the same as everyone, but it’s something

So on that note: Merry Christmas everyone!