It is all a nasty little trick, don’t believe a word of it.  It goes something like this:

When I was little, I was told that on the evening of the 24th December Father Christmas leaves his home (near the North Pole) with his trusty flight of reindeer and whizzes around the world, climbing up and down chimneys leaving presents for good boys and girls.

Now, I always thought this was a little far fetched, but, given there was always a stocking waiting for me at the end of my bed every Christmas morning, I carried on believing.

Until this year.

This year I found out that Father Christmas doesn’t visit Holland on the 24th December at all.  In Holland a gentleman called Sinterklaas visits on the 5th December.

This got me curious.  I started investigating.  I also found out that:

Iceland has 13 “Yule lads” who start arriving from the mountains into towns 13 days before December 24th

In Spain children leave their shoes under the Christmas tree the night of January 5th and presents from “Los Reyes Magos” (also known as Melchor, Gaspar and Baltasar) appear the next morning.

And in Norway there is a Yule Goat, I kid you not (poor joke)

So, it is all one big con.

Father Christmas doesn’t deliver all those presents in the early hours of Christmas day.  Instead he has resorted to a combination of:

• Outsourcing
• Load Balancing
• Some clever Marketing

Amazing what you can do if you think it through.

Sorry if I am the first to break it to you.

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Image by Malojavio El Saucejo