Mythbusters Are Comin' To Town . . .

It's that time of year when we begin to hear the pitter-patter of little feet around the house. Mein vrouw insists they belong to mice; I am holding out for elves.

It's also the time when the bah-humbuggers emerge from their dank caves and claim, often with charts, graphs, and linear equations, the impossibility of the older gent we call Santa Claus getting around the planet and distributing presents over the course of one night.

Father Christmas, Pere Noel, Sinter Klaas (and Schwarze Piet), Babbo Natale, Ded Maroz, Shengdan Laoren, Saint Nicholas, Kriss Kringle, Sion Corn, Gwiazdor, and a veritable host of other counterparts are laughing up their sleeves at these sad non-elievers. One, because they just don't get it;, two, because they are wrong; and three, because they don't even put out stockings in which to put the traditional lump of coal.

For openers, the naysayers haven't studied enough to know that visitations occur on different dates in different lands. Secondly, they fail to recognize the traditions that assign distribution to a number of those who make the spirit of the season come alive - the Three Kings, a band of schwarze pieten for example - in addition to the many names and forms of Santa Claus.

Finally, as to the the physical possibility or impossibility of this massive distribution - a logistics operation that dwarfs the scale of even the largest military applications, they have been limited by their understanding of what is physically possible in the "normal" world. In the days when snail mail and parcel post ruled, it was, indeed, dificult to conceive of the reality of Santa Claus and his Herculean task.

But, today, FedEx, UPS, Amazon, and an army of b2b and b2c fulfillment players routinely perform the impossible in distribution volumes to discrete locations - day after day, night after night - and ramp up to 10x volumes in the holiday season. When one company can pick, pack, and ship half a million pieces of women's intimate apparel every single day without breaking a sweat (three-quarters of a million on a busy day), we are no longer surprised at what a global network of distribution specialists with centuries of experience can accomplish.

So, back to your caves, doubters. Your science is limited, misapplied - and wrong. And, that whooshing sound you hear late on 24 December is merely reindeer flying at the speed of the spirit of giving, so go back to bed.