The Secret of Santa' Sleigh

Published Thursday, Dec. 24 in The Cameron Herald.

The Secret of Santa’s Sleigh

Hello boys and girls. It’s Christmastime again, and if you’re like me (and I know I am), you can’t wait for the big night when Santa Claus comes down the chimney with all the toys. But if you’re also like me you often ponder some of the deeper mysteries of the universe, like, what makes Santa’s sleigh fly?

Now, conventional wisdom would suggest that the sleigh is pulled along by eight magical flying reindeer (or nine, depending on your source) who dash from housetop to housetop. But everyone knows that reindeer can’t fly, and even if they could it is doubtful that they would have enough strength to pull a sleigh large enough to hold all of the toys necessary to supply all the children of the world, much less the speed to accomplish it within the given time frame, so there has to be another solution.

Speculation has run the gamut over the years as to the answer of this question. Does Santa have a private oil well? Maybe, but that would also require a big refinery to produce the fuel. Does his sleigh run on nuclear power? Unlikely -- the technology exist to make it small enough to be used for a personal conveyance. Has he discovered a vein of dilithium crystals in the Arctic and built a primitive warp drive? Not unless he also has a Scotty at his disposal.

I too have pondered this conundrum but had always assumed that Santa’s secret propulsion units would always remain a mystery, much like the secret formula to Coke. But then, the other day, completely by chance, I stumbled upon an ingenious technology on the internet of all places. According to a reliable direct marketing source, the government and big oil companies have been conspiring to hide this technology from us for years, even though the process is ridiculously simple and can be built by ordinary people using a very common substance for fuel.

The process was invented in the early 1800s and produces a combustible gas called oxyhydrogen (HHO), which can be used for things like blowtorches. These inventors came up with the idea for the “oxy-hydrogen blowpipe” which produces a flame hot enough to melt platinum, porcelain and fire brick. Wikipedia told me that.

So where does this gas come from? From the most plentiful substance on earth, that’s where: WATER. All you have to do is use the process of electrolysis to split H2O into its component hydrogen and oxygen molecules, and quicker than laying a finger aside of your nose, there you have a combustible fuel. And recently, some guys came up with this idea for a keen little electrolysis kit that will run off of your car battery. It comes with a bunch of tubes that you hook up which allow you to pump the oxyhydrogen straight into your carburetor, enriching your air/gas mixture and giving you more power and thus more miles per gallon. If you don’t believe me go to water4gas.com and see for yourself.

See, I gotta believe that Santa, being the inventor that he is, has already figured this out and has been using it for years. There are just too many parallels. First of all, when did we first hear of Santa Claus? It was in the poem “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”, first published in 1823, which, coincidentally, is right around the time that electrolysis was discovered. Secondly, besides cheap elf labor, what resource does Santa Claus posses in abundance? SNOW.

It all makes perfect sense. Don’t believe the naysayers who will tell you that it is inefficient because it takes more energy to perform the electrolysis than what you get from burning the resulting gas. Those are the same people who have conspired to prevent us from enjoying the benefits of the 200 m.p.g. carburetor. They will also tell you that Santa Claus is just a myth and doesn’t really exist, much less go around the world in one night in a flying sled.

Maybe using water to run your car sounds too good to be true and is too much to hope for. But why shouldn’t we hope for something better? Doesn’t Santa spread good will all over the world by bringing kids presents? And doesn’t the image of being able to reel out the garden hose and top off the tank give you some hope that there still is some good in the world? It’s the season of hope for all mankind.

So with that, I just want to say, “Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!”