Merry Christmas!

Whatever holiday you are celebrating this winter season, I hope it finds you surrounded by love, laughter and lots of wonderful things to eat. Safe travels to all of those traveling over the river and through the woods to visit loved ones.

Some accuse Santa of being a bad role model because he’s fat, 350 pounds by some estimates. He’s a fine role model: he’s friendly, kind, generous, makes people happy everywhere he goes, and is a brilliant scientist and project manager. How else could he figure out how to travel 1,000 miles per second to deliver a gift to every one of the 775 million children celebrating Christmas? And that’s after coordinating the elves to make the toys and wrap them all, using 650,000 miles of wrapping paper, according to Carnegie Mellon University. And Santa is in terrific shape. The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reports today that Santa will burn 52 billion calories just climbing chimneys tonight. That’s quite a workout. In fact, his doctor is probably worrying he’s overdoing this exercise thing. He’ll need all of those holiday cookies and glasses of milk to keep up his energy. And despite loving holiday goodies, he is living to a ripe old age of several thousand years, I hear, although I couldn’t find evidence to confirm that. :)