By Sean Moriarty

Motorists in the market for a new car in January might want to pay attention to the performance levels of Santa’s sleigh.

The big man in red has just 36 hours to play with, beginning in New Zealand late on Christmas Eve, Irish time

By the time he has visited Killarney a few hours later he will have just over half his journey completed. His work won’t be done until the early hours of St Stephen’s Day, his last port of call is Alaska, which is very near his North Pole base.

In total, Santa needs to travel 10 million kilometres in that 36 hour time frame. That means he will travel the world at a speed of 77 kilometres per second! This proves why he cannot be seen, as 77 kilometres per second is, after-all, 3,000 times the speed of sound.

But if Santa can’t be seen, it is possible, just about, to hear him because the speed he is travelling at means he, the sleigh and team of reindeer are giving off a sonic boom every couple of micro-seconds…listen very closely and it may be just possible to hear the boom.

Apart from the performance of the sleigh, Santa is a very busy man during the early hours of Christmas morning and his own level of fitness could make him a serious contender for a place on the Kerry team.

There are close to seven billion homes in the world, that gives him 130 microseconds to park the sleigh on the roof, climb down a chimney, place the presents under the tree and eat the treat left out for him. Phew! How does he do that without getting very tired?

That is easy to explain. Santa is known for his generosity. And you know what they say about generous people – they have very big hearts! Santa’s heart is a lot more powerful than any normal human being and that is one of his secrets.

That said, it is understandable why Santa needs an extra-long rest and is rarely seen anywhere in the world between Christmas Day and the following December when he starts to make his naughty or nice list again.