We all know Father Christmas is one of the most wonderful and magical parts of Christmas, so we thought we’d use our scientific knowledge to work out how the fastest man in the universe delivers all those presents in one night!

There are approximately 2 billion children in the world. Of those, about 700,000,000 celebrate Christmas (and make the nice list!). With an average of three children per house, that’s a whopping 233,000,000 stops that Saint Nick has to make! Now bear with us…

If those stops are distributed evenly around the world, with a total surface area of 317,000,000 miles, each stop is 0.91 miles apart, making a total of 212,030,000 miles that Santa has to travel.

Because of the time differences across the globe, Santa has approximately 32 hours to complete his trip, maximising the night time (and sleeping children) available. Using speed = distance ÷ time, we can then work out that he has to travel at 6,650,807.72 mph! That’s about 1,800 miles per second.

So, remember to leave out a mince pie or two to help him along on this, his busiest of nights!