Catching Claus
By: Brett Dietrich

One of my favorite Christmas memories was at my Grandma’s house in 2009. I had a great time with my cousins, Shelby and Kortni, and my sister, Kendra. The best part of the whole thing was our big mission for the week: Operation Catching Claus.
The Debate
It all started at dinner two days before Christmas. Every dinner, the four of us sat together at the small counter. We always played the same thing: the Animal Game. Shelby and I were always on a team against Kendra and Kortni, oldest vs. youngest. Basically, we would come up with an animal and give the other team two hints, before they asked yes-or-no questions and tried to figure it out, but sometimes we would expand it into a new genre such as movies, characters, or fictional people. It was a very interesting game and very fun to play, especially when you randomly guess and get it right! So, at that particular meal we chose to use real people. At one point, they chose Santa Claus. This caused an argument between us, disagreeing if Santa was a real person or not, considering there was no evidence of him.
“Then how do the gifts get here? Huh?”
“Kortni, do you not realize that ‘Santa’ has the exact same handwriting as Mom?”
The argument continued like this for a long time, and we couldn’t agree at all. Shelby and I continued to mention the similar handwriting, wrapping paper, how we would hear him in the house with his large body walking on creaky floors and more. They argued that there was no definitive proof he didn’t exist and that he could be somewhat “superhuman”. No matter what we said to each other, we couldn’t agree on whether Santa was real or not.
The Facts
Shelby and I decided we should consult our parents to try to prove Kendra and Kortni wrong, thinking that they would definitely agree with our more logical thinking. Of course, like all other good parents, they responded with “No, he’s real...how else would you get all those presents?” Like before, Shelby and I argued that “Santa” has the exact same handwriting as them, but they would just tell us it was a coincidence or something. At this point we were very irritated because of two things:
1. We wanted to be proven right even though we already knew we were correct.
2. We didn’t want Kendra and Kortni to be right.

After thinking for a while, Shelby came up with a great idea!

“ Why don’t we just look up facts to explain why Santa isn’t real?”.

For some reason, even my brilliant mind couldn’t come up with the idea to think of this basic plan: read all of the facts, prove them wrong, and celebrate in victory! So we began to compile a list of facts that prove Santa to not exist, because you can find pretty much anything you want to on the internet. Luckily it was easy to find, with many blogs and articles that had something to prove about Santa’s existence. Here’s what we found on the oh-so-amazing internet:
-With the average 3.5 kids per home (and at least one good one in each), he would have to visit 108 million homes in 31 hours, due to time zones
-He would have to visit 967.7 homes every second on Christmas night
-Based on this, he would have about 1/1000 of a second to stop at the house, go down the chimney, deliver a gift or two, fill the stockings, eat the cookies and milk, and get back in the sleigh and go to the next house, which is highly impossible
-Based on this, he would be travelling at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times faster than sound!
-If the average gift weight is about 2 pounds, the sleigh would weigh about 500,000 tons
-A real reindeer can only carry 300 pounds, but considering the flying kind can carry 10 times this, Santa would still need 360,000 reindeer not 8 or 9
600,000 (because of the reindeer weight) tons going at 650 miles per second would cause enormous air resistance and heat. The front two reindeer would absorb about 14.3 quintillion joules of energy each second, causing them to immediately explode
-This being said, all the reindeer would be gone in 4.26 thousandths of a second, which would be when Santa reached his fifth house of the night
-Going from stopped to 650 miles per second would put 17,000 g’s of force on Santa, or over 4,315,000 pounds of force, which would immediately crush him before he even got started
-So if Santa was ever alive, he’d be dead before ever delivering a gift

Shelby and I read all of this as fast as we possibly could, without taking a breath, trying to shock all of our parents and siblings with the amount of facts we found. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the reaction from them we were expecting. Instead of being shocked and amazed, my mom simply said, “ Well, that’s exactly why Santa is so amazing and awesome...that’s so, so, cool!”. Obviously, I wasn’t satisfied with this result. I put lots of time and research in just for this? Come on! That is not fair at all!
Beginning the Blueprint

Shelby and I came up with another good idea! We could make a plan to try to catch Santa, and if he never comes, we’ll know he isn’t real and can prove it to Kortni and Kendra. Apparently though, Kortni overheard us talking from her bedroom which was next door. We hadn’t known she would be in there, so we felt safe to talk about it loudly without them hearing. At breakfast that morning, on Christmas Eve, they confronted us about it. They gave us a choice: abandon the mission or include them. Obviously, we didn’t want to give up after working so hard on it, so we let them join in. Surprisingly, they were more enthusiastic about it than we were. We discussed how we should do it and what things we should make sure to get done before. The first step was creating a blueprint.


Kortni was the best artist out of the four of us, so she began to make the blueprint of the house. It took her about one hour to complete an entire sketch of the house from above and a drawing of inside each room. I’ll be honest, I was pretty impressed by the drawing but not really surprised. I saw her drawing all the time that week, so it wasn’t shocking that she was very good. We labeled the important areas to cover first: the stairs, the living room (with the Christmas tree), both of our parents’ rooms, and the area where the dog was.

Next, we assigned roles and locations. Kortni was supposed to watch the dog, Holly, who loved to bark but could stay quiet if forced. Kendra would watch our parents room, making sure they weren’t still awake when we moved into action. Shelby watched the stairs and her parent’s room for the same reason, but their room was closer to the living room, so it was a little bit more important. Lastly, I was in charge of actually catching Santa. The tree was in the back corner of the living room so that all the presents could be placed in front of it. I would go up the stairs to the living room, crawl through a small gap between the tree and one of the walls. Then I would sit all the way behind the tree, with my cousin’s camera to take videos. Also, I had to watch and see who would drink the milk and eat the cookies left out on the counter. This was important because we had to catch Santa. I mean that is the main goal!
Training
The next big thing we had to do was training. Our parents and grandparents weren’t home, so we didn’t have to worry about being seen. We absolutely had to be ready when the time came: quick, careful, and not seen or heard, which was hard to do in that house. The first training task we did was walking in total darkness. We did this in the garage where our grandparent’s minivan was located. Kortni turned out all the lights and shut the doors so that it was completely dark, to the point where I couldn’t see my hand even if I held it one inch away from my face. To be honest, I was kind of nervous that they would lock me in there and try to scare me, but they didn’t thankfully! Kendra made sure I really couldn’t see by putting a bandana over my eyes. Then Kortni spun me around about 7-8 times, and carried me to another part of the garage. My goal from here was to walk around the car 10 times in a row without hitting anything and making noise. I was expecting it to be impossible, and I was pretty much right!
The first few times around, I was having absolutely no success in accomplishing the task, either tripping over the paint cans or bumping into the car. The worst thing was being hit by the mirrors that stick out. It was just so cruel because I would be feeling confident walking slowly without hitting anything and suddenly I’d be hit right in the chest, out of nowhere. After about three or four times being hit, I figured out it would be easier if I crawled. Finally, after an hour or so of practice, I completed the task. It was hard! The next thing we did was speed training. We ran up and down the stairs as fast as we could while still being quiet and then tried to see how fast we could get into our positions. It took us less than two minutes to do it, which wasn’t too bad. Finally, we were ready to go!
Go Time!

At about 4:30 that day, we completed all of the training we had planned. Finally, I could relax! Shelby and I played foosball downstairs for about 45 minutes, and it was really fun! I beat her ? times, so I was crowned “Foosball Champion” of our family. After dinner, all the cousins went downstairs into our room to wait. We were planning to wait until about 12:00 a.m. that night to begin. Until then, we watched some Christmas movies, including “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “A Christmas Carol”. Once it reached 11:50, we began to get ready to spread out. It was time. It was only one day, but it felt more like a week of preparation. Then, we began to go. Kortni called Holly over and did a great job of keeping her quiet as we got up and started filing out of the room. Holly seemed calmer than normal. Shelby began quickly moving to her parent’s room, which would be an easy task for her because she was very “stealthy”. Next, I began to go. It was getting exciting; it was time to go and figure out the real facts about Santa. This is what we’ve been waiting for!
The Catastrophe

Then, it happened. Probably one of the worst ways for a mission to end if you ask me, especially since we put so much time into it. It was very frustrating, and since it was Kendra, I was even angrier, figuring she might’ve done it on purpose so she wouldn’t be proven wrong. She was like that, willing to ruin other people’s plans just to save herself. Honestly, it could be really frustrating. About 30 seconds in, Kendra began to walk across the hall to guard our parent’s room, but as she was walking over there, she did it. There was little light, and she “accidentally” stepped on a squishy ball of Holly’s that makes a super loud “squeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaak” sound. Not only did this probably already wake up our parents, but it also caused Holly to start barking crazily, which instantly woke up everyone who wasn’t already awake. Our parents came out and caught us all just standing wondering what to do and whisper-yelling at Kendra. They asked us what was going on and, of course, even though we made a plan to deny everything, Kendra told them. Not only did she tell them, but she even blamed Shelby and I! I was so frustrated with her. I couldn’t believe she would do that! Just like that, 30 seconds in to our important mission, it came to an end. It was very frustrating, mostly for Shelby and I. If Kortni hadn’t overheard us in the first place, they wouldn’t have gotten involved and our plan might’ve actually worked. Instead, they ruined it for us.
Aftermath
Once they caught us, they sent us back to bed and made sure we wouldn’t do it again by posting Holly outside our room. We went back to bed and quickly fell asleep, tired after lots of training, or maybe it was just because it was about 12:30 a.m., I’m not really sure. The next morning was Christmas. Like always, we four got up before anyone else and just sat in the living room for about an hour until everyone else woke up. During that time, we argued and expressed our anger towards Kendra and continued our debate about Santa. I guess they never really will know he isn’t real, although Shelby and I do. In the end, I guess we can all agree on this though: Things don’t always go as planned!