1933: Santa Facts

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Santa Facts

Title text: We've gotten him up to 20% milk and cookies through an aggressive public campaign, but that seems to be his dietary limit. Anything above that and he starts developing nutritional deficiencies.

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

This comic provides some dubious "Facts" and "Features" of the creature known as "Santa."

Fact/Feature	Explanation
Type: Flying/Psychic
Plural: "Santa"
Active warrants: 5
Lubricated for easy passage down chimneys
Vertical Leap: 14 Miles
Sleigh Flag of Convenience: Panama	The Flag of Convenience identifies the open registry in which an ocean-going vessel has its registration information. Panama maintains one of the top three open registries. Owners of a vessel may choose to use an open registry to avoid labor or safety regulations of the owner's country. They may also choose such a registry to help obscure ownership of the vessel. Which concern applies in the case of Santa's sleigh is not stated.
9th in Presidential Line of Succession	The Presidential Line of Succession specifies the order in which persons may become or act as President of the United States if the incumbent President becomes incapacitated, dies, resigns, or is removed from office. Having Santa as the 9th in that order would place him above the Secretary of Agriculture. An alternative interpretation would hold that Santa is the present Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue.
Not technically an insect — actually an arthropod
Only known vampire able to enter house without being invited
Works with Alexa
Ribbed
IUCN Red List: Critically endangered	The IUCN monitors the size and viability of populations of organisms; 'critically endangered' marks a population as being highly susceptible to extinction. Santa, being one (or possibly two, if we include his wife) of a kind and lacking any offspring (and, indeed, likely being incapable of effectively fathering any), will most likely be the last member of his population; thus extinction will arrive with his or his wife's death.
Diet: 80% Reindeer
Liability Insurance: None

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[annotated picture of santa]

Type: Flying/Psychic

Plural: "Santa"

Active Warrants: 5

Lubricated for easy passage down chimneys

Vertical leap: 14 Miles

Sleigh flag of convenience: Panama

9th in presidential line of succession

Not technically an insect- actually an arthropod

Only known vampire able to enter house without being invited

Works with Alexa

Ribbed

IUCN red list: Critically endangered

Diet: 80% Reindeer

Liability Insurance: None

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Discussion

I added a Taxonomy Note as I wanted to raise the difference between Santa and Father Christmas. The latter wears a hooded, ermine trimmed robe (red in Britain, green or white in other domains) with full sleeves and a simple tie cord for a belt. Probably shoes and gloves - if not bare hands. It's easy to spot the difference when you know. He probably walked at the head of a procession, despensing good advice and the good news that the days were not getting any shorter. Latterly he fell on hard times and was the chief reveller and drunkard. RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 20:19, 26 December 2017 (UTC)

I don't think this should be in the table --172.68.54.106 15:35, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

A BIG THANKS!!! I'm fighting against windmills, ehh... tables in explanations like this since a long time. Tables are meant to provide a brief overview, but when a cell is exploding to many sentences that's a really bad layout. Please check my changes and let me know.--Dgbrt (talk) 20:22, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Special: Contributions - apart from 60 years in Britain, just Wiki Father Christmas. You say FC is indistinguishable from SC? Hooded robe, tie cord , shoes and bare hands vs Cap, jacket, trousers, wide buckle belt, boots and mittens. Walking or horse, using door, blessing, feasting and drinking vs flying sleigh and tundra fauna (reindeer), chimney, presents (possibly originally red and white mushrooms). The gown vs jacket et al makes identification easy at 1000 yards! RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 19:19, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

(Side note: The words "Special: Contributions" is a wiki note, not part of his name, which means not only is it generic, but this text is only visible when writing, so it makes for a poor nickname). Sorry, I must agree with ol' 216 22. Everything you've specified are standard and common accepted variences of Santa Claus, including the name Father Christmas. People (writers, directors, costumists) tend to use such aspects when they want an old time classic and/or more wholesome feel to the depiction. And the name "Father Christmas" is seen as an alternate name for Santa - like St. Nick and St. Nicholas - with a mild implication towards including these concepts. Plus, the gloves are the worst example of all, because even the more common jacket-and-belt version will often use fine gloves rather than mittens or bare hands. At least here in North America. Maybe in Britain they're treated as two different characters (though why????!?), but in North America this is one character. When it comes to cultural differences, unless specified otherwise the comics are referring to how things are in the U.S.A. simply because that's where Randall lives. Combine this with the fact that nowhere is "Father Christmas" even mentioned, trying to define such a distinction isn't suitable. Besides, if they're separate characters, the one has no place being mentioned in a comic about the other, right? :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 09:00, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

"Maybe in Britain they're treated as two different characters" - They're not. 141.101.76.16 10:05, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Well, _I_ didn't think so, but RIIW is insisting otherwise. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm fairly certain Santa would only be charged with trespassing (rather than breaking and entering) in many states. Someone should try to find the 5 states where entering a house through a chimney would result in a warrant. --172.68.238.172 09:53, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

A vertical leap of 14 miles (~23 km), ignoring air resistance would require an initial launch velocity of slightly more than 2180 feet per second (665 m/s), somewhat over twice the speed of sound. Is there something clever to be observed here about sonic booms (or lack thereof)? JohnHawkinson (talk) 13:46, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

I'm not going to bother to update the page, but the comic was updated to fix the arthropod error (the original wording implied that insects were not arthropods). Also, "RIIW - Ponder it", your description of Father Christmas is indistinguishable from that of Santa. Could you provide a source for whatever distinction might exist? 108.162.216.22 07:00, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

I removed the following passage:

   Absurdly, Randall has mistaken Santa for a lobster, given his bright red coloration and the surname Claus (which is pronounced the same as a lobster's 
   "claws"). This may be an homage to the film the Nightmare Before Christmas, where Jack Skellington believes Christmas Town is led by "Sandy Claws" who is 
   "like a lobster, huge and red".

   :There is a relatively common misconception that lobsters are insects. In fact, lobsters are crustaceans, but there is a kernel of truth to the 
   misconception, as crustaceans and insects are related (both are arthropods).  Thus, the "fact" states that Lobster-Santa is not technically an insect; he 
   is actually an arthropod. 

It makes a lot of illogical assumptions.R3TRI8UTI0N (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

14 mile vertical leap

Could the 14 mile vertical leap be connected to the flying/psychic type, allowing for a longer duration of vertical thrust than the duration for which Santa's feet are touching ground? If one of Santa's vampiric abilities allows him to alter his mass without changing volume (many legends allow vampires to turn into bats, which chiropteric forms at least have less mass than their humanoid forms), that could explain the vertical leap stat as primarily deriving from bouyancy, with the limit having to do with the minimum mass he can attain. 162.158.58.45 08:27, 27 December 2017 (UTC)

My assumption was that "14 mile vertical leap" refered to the cumualative distance travel going up & down chimneys over the course of Christmas. JamesCurran (talk) 19:08, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

If we allow the average chimney height to be a probably conservative 5m, this would allow for him to visit only about 4,500 houses before getting trapped in someone's living room, and those of us not living in the most advanced time zones are going to be very disappointed when our presents don't arrive.141.101.76.16 10:14, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Arthropods

Is it worth mentioning that humans are "arthropods" if you treat that as a word rather than a taxon? "Arthropod" is Latin for "jointed legs." We do have joints in our legs. 108.162.219.214 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Works with Alexa

Starting this year (2017) owners of Alexa devices could use the "NORAD tracks Santa" Alexa Skill. This was mentioned several times in the news, and I even set it up on my Amazon Echo so the little cousins could use it. Might this also be related? Bpendragon (talk) 16:51, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Plural

This can also be a Pokémon reference, because all Pokémon have identical plural forms, e.g. "I caught two Pidgey today.", not "two Pidgeys". 108.162.219.10 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Lubricated

This could also be a reference to Santa being Intoxicated (also described as "Lubricated") a popular Meme on Holiday Cards. Its purpose here being connected either the belief that being drunk helps you survive injury (in this case, possible repeated falls down a chimney) [1]. This would also potentially add DUI to the list of possible charges. DaoFerret (talk) 19:59, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

Ribbed/lubricated may as well refer to the common double entendres on how the red, erect Santa is going up and down the chimney. 172.68.182.52 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Lobster

The perception of Santa as a lobster may be a reference to the Danny Elfman song "Kidnap The Sandy Claws" from movie The Nightmare Before Christmas. The lyrics include "Wait! I've got a better plan / To catch this big red lobster man / Let's pop him in a boiling pot / And when he's done we'll butter him up" 162.158.59.214 23:58, 28 December 2017 (UTC)

NoR3TRI8UTI0N (talk) 02:44, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Vampires

Current explanation talks about most versions of vampires needing to be invited in by the owner. I've actually never seen a vampire story with that rule, that it specifically has to be the owner. I've seen it where anyone LIVING THERE can invite them in, I think it's been more often that I've seen that any non-vampire who is inside the house can invite them in, and I'm pretty sure I've seen at least once where it's ANYBODY currently inside the house, including a vampire who has been invited in themselves. NiceGuy1 (talk) 09:09, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, The Vampire Diaries requires it to be the owner. Don't know about others.141.101.76.16 10:18, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

Well I haven't seen Vampire Diaries, so my statement stands, LOL! I'm certainly no expert, but I feel like most depictions are anybody who lives there, with the rest being any human in the house. I'm sure I've seen a scene where some oblivious dumbass (who doesn't live there and just happens to be present) does the inviting, and I recall a scene in True Blood (either 2nd season or late 1st) where a little girl who lived there - certainly not the owner - did the inviting.NiceGuy1 (talk) 04:57, 19 January 2018 (UTC)