secret of Rudolph's red nose, The

Spectator, The, Dec 19-Dec 26, 1998 by Rogers, Byron

CAN REINDEER FLY? by Roger Highfield Metro, 12.99, pp. 294

Some years ago there was a television series on Welsh history which my mother watched, having become convinced that in the course of his excitable delivery the presenter's false teeth would at some point pop out. They never did, but at the end my mother, to her bewilderment, found she knew a fair amount about Welsh history. I have had a similar experience with Dr Highfield's digressions on Christmas, in the course of which, and in spite of myself, I learned a fair amount about physics, biology and all those other trap doors into which half my class at school disappeared silently a long time ago.

Take Santa Claus. For him to deliver all those presents in one night to the 2,106 million children under 18 in the world would mean a fairly disastrous collision on his part with the laws of science. The speed involved would subject him to forces 17,500 times greater than gravity, and the reindeer, encountering air resistance, would be vapourised within four thousandths of a second, creating deafening sonic booms. The absence of such booms enabled Richard Dawkins, a sentimental soul, to disprove the existence of Santa to a sixyear-old.

Then there is Santa's weight, estimated by Dr Highfield to be around 30 stone, so the g force he will encounter is this times the necessary acceleration, which would be two billion times that experienced by any fighter pilot. And Santa has 4,212 million pounds of toys to deliver.

The message is clear: if you want to save on Christmas, talk to a scientist, especially in Britain where the spending on presents amounts to four per cent of an individual's annual income (and where eight per cent of the national economy is devoted to the production of such presents). With the help of a scientist Ebenezer Scrooge could have held off all the Spirits, kicked away Tiny Tim's crutch and died old.

Zoology comes in a rush with the reindeer. Rudolph's red nose, a chap at the University of Oslo wrote in Parasitology Today, was probably due to a parasitic infection of the respiratory system, reindeer being prone to such infections, especially when an effort like that involved in pulling Santa is added. This paper, the scientist recorded bemusedly, brought him more fame than anything else in his academic career.

For some reason Dr Highfield does not mention the one fact I know from direct experience, that it is impossible to get reindeer to work as a team, all the sleighs in Lapland being pulled by single animals. Dogs, yes, but then Santa would have encountered the bizarre slipstream of 12 small animals farting as one. Odd that no traveller should have mentioned that, but it is the one thing I remember about the Arctic, especially when compounded by the fact that the dogs get fed on rotting fish.

Rudolph would also have had to be castrated, Dr Highfield goes relentlessly on, to keep his antlers for Christmas. But then so might Santa Claus to preserve his own longevity, eunuchs living on average 13 years longer than intact males (according to a paper published in the 1969 Journal of Gerontology).

The business of his coming down the chimney may, according to an academic at Sheffield University, derive from the early yurts of northern Europe in which the chimney and the front door were the same. And Santa, he goes on, may be derived from the tribal shaman, usually high as a kite on magic mushrooms, which induced in him the conviction that he could fly. Snow is important as the shaman urinated in this, which was then eaten by tribesmen and surprise, surprise, the reindeer, all of whom got high as kites, hence the origin of the phrase `to get pissed'.

This has to be the strangest book I have ever read, even stranger than Havelock Ellis, who introduced me to the anatomist Realdus Columbus who claimed to have discovered the clitoris in 1593, also to an Italian woman whose pubic hair reached her knees and was used to make wigs. Dr Highfield introduced me to a Miss X, 'a 34year-old Episcopalian virgin, newspaper editor and lesbian', who considered the Christ child to be her rival for God's affections.

If like Cliff in the American TV comedy Cheers you have a weakness for bizarre facts, then this is the book you have waited for all your life. If you were a bore before, then, after reading this, you will be a bore on a superhuman scale. It is of course impossible to review satisfactorily. I loved it.