I guess you’ve never met my young friend Alex, the one people call the “Smart Alex”. If you have met him, you’d know that Alex is one kid with more questions that you can answer. He just wants to know more about everything, even though he’s only ten years old.

I met Alex the other day, just after Christmas. Christmas was naturally still fresh in our minds. 

“How are you, Alex?” I asked before he could ask me a question. Believe me, it’s best not to let Alex get on the question trail if you can help it. “Now that Christmas is over and the dust has settled we can see Christmas in a clearer light.”

“What dust, Uncle Mickey?” Alex asked. 

“Why, the dust kicked up by Santa’s reindeer of course!” I replied. 

“But don’t those reindeer fly above the ground? I thought everyone knows that? If you look at the Christmas cards you’ll see that Santa’s sleigh is often in mid-air. How else can Santa get to the rooftop chimneys to deliver Christmas presents to children every Christmas Eve?” dear Alex shot back.

“Uh, I don’t know, Alex,” I replied after a minute. Don’t you just hate to admit to a 10-year-old that you don’t know something that he thinks you should? 

“How do reindeer fly, anyway?”  Alex asked hardly a second later.

“I don’t know,” I said lamely. “Maybe it’s like Superman flying without wings, purely by leg muscle power,” I added softly, tentatively.

That evidently did not satisfy Alex. “Reindeer legs look kind of skinny and weak,” he pointed out firmly.  

When I remained quiet, pondering the matter, Alex pulled out another question from his inexhaustible bag of questions. “Is it true that Rudolf’s red nose is bright enough to light Santa’s way all over the world every dark Christmas Eve?” 

“ Umm, maybe it’s a kind of LED light,” I replied after a while.  “You know, low energy-high intensity light?”

Alex frowned. “How fast can Santa’s sleigh travel anyway, Uncle Mickey?” he suddenly wanted to know. 

I scratched my head and asked why he wanted to know this. 

“Well, you know, Santa delivers millions of Christmas presents to children all over the world, millions of children, all on Christmas Eve, doesn’t he? Does his sleigh travel at the speed of light?” 

“Well, yeah, I see what you are getting at. Santa’s delivery time per present must be in millionths of a second. Why, it beats Amazon.com or Alibaba.com by a mile. By a million miles!” 

“Uncle Mickey, I wonder how Santa’s small sleigh can carry so many millions of presents. Why, wouldn’t it have to be as large as a container ship? And how can a few reindeer move so many presents??”  

“Let me hazard a guess.  Maybe Santa sub-contracts his deliveries. Amazon.com and/or Alibaba.com?” 

“Yeah, but there’s something that puzzles me,” Alex said softly. “How does such a fat man climb down countless chimneys? And without getting his nice red coat or white beard all sooty?” 

I had to admit that that was a mystery, all right. 

But before I could catch my breath, Alex hit me with a double whammy: “How did he get so fat in the first place? What’s there to eat at the North Pole where he lives?” 

“You’ve got a point there, Alex. Never thought of that. It’s all ice and snow up there. There’s not even grass, only polar bears, whales and fish. Maybe he eats polar bears, whales and fish," I ventured. “All quite fattening, you know?” 

“Then what do the reindeer eat? As you said, there’s no grass and nothing for them to eat there! And what do Santa’s toy-making elves eat? Reindeer? Is it true that Santa’s press secretary is Elvish Pressley?”

I threw up my hands in surrender. I mean, how would you answer all these questions?

However, Alex was not done yet. “If you ask me, I think there’s something unbearably fishy about the whole Santa and reindeer story, huh, Uncle Mickey?” 

I nodded quietly, trying to look as wise as I could. “Alex, nowadays when people think of Christmas, the first thing many think of is a fat old man in a red coat climbing up and down millions of chimneys in one night. They would rather believe in flying reindeer and a red nose giving enough light to travel all over the world in one night. They forget that Christmas is for remembering Jesus Christ and all the wonderful things that he did.” 

Alex thought for a second. 

“Uncle Mickey, why would people rather believe in a pack of lies about Santa and flying reindeer who don’t exist than believe in Jesus who does exist and who came from Heaven to save us from going to Hell for our sins?” 

Why indeed?

Mickey Chiang wrote a weekly humorous satirical column in several newspapers and magazines in the 1970’s, 80’s  and early 90’s, under the pen name “Macaw”. Alex was one of the characters he wrote about. 

(Mickey was called home to be with the Lord on 15 March 2023.)