So today, my friend Jen shared with me a post, that went a little something like:

Christmas is now gonna be mid January. Due to Santa having to quarantine for 14 days when he arrives in the country

Calculating Christmas

So I hate to debunk this, but I fear that there are some misconceptions and inaccurate calculations involved here

Let’s do some Bad Andrew Math

Santa visits ~200 countries and territories each year. Each country imposes its own ~14 day (2 week) isolation policy

On the basis that we (Ireland) are GMT 00:00 – let’s assume that we’re “in the middle”

So let’s call that country #100

Let’s assume that some of the countries, relax their 2-week policy – so “zero-rate” half the countries in terms of isolation requirements (I hope he wears a mask as well as a big red suit)

We (Ireland) could be half-way through 100 countries … say country #50

That means that we have to way 50*14 days = 700 days

So Santa doesn’t visit Ireland for the 2020 run for 700 days from today … meaning he will arrive July 5, 2022

But this means that to get to the remaining 50 countries, that’s another 700 days, which means he’ll finish the 2020 run June 4, 2024

Allowing for 364 days to make new presents, the 2021 run will start on June 3, 2025, to get to Ireland on/around May 4, 2027

And so-on

The Moral

The maths isn’t perfect, I’ll grant you that. And really, there is no moral to this story, just a silly outlook on the grim reminder that forget the schools, we have to stop the spread of this virus to to protect Christmas 2020 and beyond

(yes, this is satire, and please don’t hate me for the Bad Andrew Math TM)