Santa

How long does it take for Santa to deliver his Christmas gifts?

This is a serious mathematical question. Making the following assumptions: Only good children get stuff. Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist children do not get anything. Santa spends approximately three minutes on each delivery (getting down the chimney, leaving the stuff, going back up to the sleigh). How long does it take?

Public Comments

1. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. Excluding children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each. You've assumed a rate of 3 minutes to handle each house (I assume travel time to the next house is included). That comes out to 20 deliveries an hour, 480 hours a day or 175,200 deliveries a year. 108 million homes / 175,200 per year ≈ 616 years I think Santa's going to have to work a little faster if he intends to get it all done in one night! My calculations show he'd have to do more like 1000 deliveries every second!