“Santa is on a diet this year.” That’s what my dad said Christmas’ 09 when I disappointingly found that Santa had taken one itty bitty bite from the heaping plate of Oreos I had left the night before.
A conundrum that bothered me ever since was how Santa somehow ate potentially millions of cookies in a few hours. Even if he were dieting and took only one bite, surely he would be so heavy that the reindeers could not bear the extra weight.
Let’s do the math ourselves to figure out the extent of Santa’s cookie eating abilities.
For the sake of simplicity, we will make some assumptions for our calculations.
Only Americans leave cookies out for Santa
Leaving cookies and milk is an American custom originating during the Great Depression. Left as a gift (or bribe) for Santa, the treats were meant to be a show of gratitude during economic hardship. Children from other countries tend to leave gifts like coffee, mince pies, personalized letters, or carrots and hay
Santa visits any household that has children.
There are 48.2 million children in the U.S. between 0 and 11 years old. While not all American families celebrate Christmas, we will assume Santa visits all children.
Santa eats 1 cookie per household.
There is an average of 1.93 children per household in the U.S. Dividing the number of total children (48.2 million) by 1.93 estimates that Santa visits nearly 25 million households. If Santa decides to eat one cookie at each house, then he eats about 25 million cookies in one night.
That’s a lot of cookies. How can we visualize that?
Let’s be nice to Santa and say that he eats only Oreos, an American favorite modest in calories and size. If Santa eats 25 million Oreos, each weighing 11.3 grams, then he eats the weight equivalent of nearly 26 school buses. School buses. The reindeers would definitely not be happy carrying around the extra Oreo weight.
Santa is 5’7” and 260 pounds, according to the U.S. military… well, according to the NORAD Santa Tracker, operated by Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. Let’s also give Santa the benefit of the doubt and consider him an “extremely active” 70 year old man. Using a daily calorie calculator, Santa’s daily caloric need is 3,606 calories per day. One night of gouging on Oreos, each 53 calories, gives Santa 1.325 billion calories.
If Santa ate nothing else, it would take Santa over 1000 years to fully burn off one Christmas’ worth of cookies.
However, we’ve made all these assumptions thinking Santa as mere mortal. Santa has a slew of magical powers - including squeezing down chimneys, perpetual jolliness, stealth, and most importantly, immortality. His digestive system has eternity to work through these cookies, so no worries! And perhaps he has magical digestive capabilities. It’s a Christmas miracle that he can indulge like this every year.
Further reading:
Fascinated by competitive eating? ESPN once did a video modeling the expansion of the human stomach after eating nearly 70 hot dogs in a dummy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9DZmoRY0H4
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