{"id":8694,"date":"2019-12-09T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T17:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=8694"},"modified":"2019-12-08T12:27:54","modified_gmt":"2019-12-08T20:27:54","slug":"rudolphs-medical-issue-a-kfc-christmas-xmas-and-other-curiosities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=8694","title":{"rendered":"Rudolph&#8217;s Medical Issue, A KFC Xmas and Other Holiday Curiosities"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Bob Sparrow<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_8682\" style=\"width: 290px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=8682\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8682\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8682\" class=\"wp-image-8682 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/santa-sleigh-2-280x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"280\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/santa-sleigh-2-280x300.jpg 280w, https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/santa-sleigh-2.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 280px) 100vw, 280px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8682\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Santa&#8217;s High-Tech Sleigh<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Now that you\u2019ve been given those great gift ideas from Suzanne\u2019s blog last week, I thought I\u2019d continue that December Christmas theme with some little-known and less-cared about Christmas facts.<\/p>\n<p>I really shouldn\u2019t have even put my name on this one, since my search of the topic this week sent me to Roger Highfield\u2019s book,\u00a0<em><strong>The Physics of Christmas: From the Aerodynamics of Reindeer to the Thermodynamics of Turkey<\/strong>,\u00a0<\/em>as well as humorous comments on the book, from\u00a0Amsterdam marketer, Alexandra Libina.\u00a0 Highfield\u2019s book raises questions that I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve all pondered; such as, Can Reindeer Fly? Why is Santa Fat?\u00a0 Why is Rudolph\u2019s Nose Red? How Does Santa Manage to Deliver Presents to an Estimated 842 Million Households in a Single Night?\u00a0 If you\u2019ve struggled with some of these conundrums, here finally are some answers . . .<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Is Santa pretty much the same all over the world?\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0No, in Holland, Sinterklass (the Dutch version of Santa Claus) arrives from Spain, not the North Pole, and his helpers are not adorable hard-working elves, but rather (now politically-incorrect) black-faced boys and girls who can steal your kids if they misbehave and bring them back to Spain, which according to the Dutch is a severe punishment. Travel tip: Don&#8217;t take your kids to Holland for Christmas.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>How does Santa deliver all those toys all over the world in one night?<\/strong>\u00a0 The number of children and households in the world would indicate that Santa would have to make 842 million stops on Christmas Eve, traveling some 221 million miles.\u00a0 Given the different time zones, Santa has 36 hours to deliver all the gifts and thus would have to average a speed of approximately 650 miles\n<div id=\"attachment_8697\" style=\"width: 294px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=8697\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8697\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-8697\" class=\"wp-image-8697 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Santa-relaxing.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"284\" height=\"177\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-8697\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Santa relaxing after a time-warp Christmas Eve<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>second<\/strong>.\u00a0 It\u00a0<em>is<\/em>\u00a0less than the speed of light, therefore theoretically possible, but extremely difficult, particularly for a chubby old man.\u00a0 So how does he do it?\u00a0 He\u00a0<strong>\u2018stretches time\u2019<\/strong>\u00a0like a rubber band, which actually gives him months to deliver gifts while only a few minutes pass for the rest of us.\u00a0 Just believe!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div id=\"attachment_8683\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\">\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">\n<\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>\u00a0<strong>\u00a0What\u2019s the the most popular time for couples to break up?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Couples are more likely to end their relationship\u00a0<strong>two weeks before Christmas<\/strong>\u00a0and two weeks after Valentine\u2019s day, during the spring break.\u00a0Christmas Day, however, is the least favorite day for breakups.\u00a0 So if you can make it through this week, you should be good . . . at least until after Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Haven\u2019t you always wondered what the Japanese eat for Christmas dinner?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Probably not, because the\u00a0percentage of Christian people in Japan is close to zero, but due to a post-WW II ad campaign every Christmas, kids and grown-ups head to the closest\u00a0<strong>KFC<\/strong>\u00a0to enjoy some fried chicken \u2013 the closest food to turkey that you can get in Japan.\u00a0 Chopsticks lickin\u2019 good!<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Is it sacrilegious to substitute an \u2018X\u2019 for Christ when writing Xmas?<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0No, it does not take\u00a0the \u201cChrist\u201d out of Christmas, no one is taking \u201cChrist\u201d anywhere. In the Greek alphabet, the letter X (\u201cchi\u201d) is the first letter of the Greek word for Christ.\u00a0 Yeah, it&#8217;s all Greek to me too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why is Rudolph\u2019s nose red?<\/strong>\u00a0The original Rudolph\u00a0did not have a red nose, as red noses were seen\n<div id=\"attachment_8684\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?attachment_id=8684\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-8684\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-8684 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/santas-reindeer.jpg\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" srcset=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/santas-reindeer-300x127.jpg 300w, https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/santas-reindeer.jpg 346w\" alt=\"\" width=\"346\" height=\"146\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Female or Castrated? (the deer not Santa!)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>as an indicator of chronic alcoholism and no one wanted him to look like a drunkard.\u00a0 \u00a0Quite simply his red nose is a result of a parasitic infection of his respiratory system.\u00a0 Another seldom-known fact is that Rudolph\u2019s original name was Reginald.<\/p>\n<div id=\"content_btf_wrapper\" class=\"adunitwrapper content_btf_wrapper mv-size-300x250\" data-wrapper=\"content_btf\"><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Is there a gender issue with the Santa\u2019s reindeer?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Possibly, since most of the reindeer names are masculine and it is a known fact that male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter, so Santa\u2019s team is either made up of all females or castrated males.\u00a0 There\u2019s a cheery Christmas thought.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>How did Christmas cards help our POWs?\u00a0<\/strong>Bicycle, the U.S. playing card company, manufactured cards to give all the POWS in Germany during World War II as Christmas presents. These\u00a0<strong>cards, when soaked in water, revealed an escape route for POWs.<\/strong>\u00a0Colonel Klink and the rest of the Nazi never knew.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Bob Sparrow Now that you\u2019ve been given those great gift ideas from Suzanne\u2019s blog last week, I thought I\u2019d continue that December Christmas theme with some little-known and less-cared about Christmas facts. I really shouldn\u2019t have even put my &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/?p=8694\">read more<span class=\"meta-nav\"><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[3221,3223,3224,3220,630],"class_list":["post-8694","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-holiday-observations","tag-alexandra-libina","tag-christmas-eve","tag-pows-rudolph","tag-roger-highfield","tag-santa-claus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/12\/Santa-relaxing.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31aN0-2ge","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8694","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8694"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8694\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8700,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8694\/revisions\/8700"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromabirdseyeview.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}