Had a long year? Then maybe it’s time to have a laugh. Here are some of my favourite Christmas jokes.
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“I once bought my kids batteries for Christmas with a note saying, toys not included.” (Bernard Manning).
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The four stages of life – You believe in Santa Claus – You don’t believe in Santa Claus – You become Santa Claus – You look like Santa Claus.
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Why would you invite a mushroom to a Christmas party?
He’s a fun guy to be with.
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Three men died on Christmas Eve and were met by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates.
‘In honour of this holy season’, Saint Peter said, ‘You must each possess something that symbolises Christmas to get into heaven.’
The first man fumbled through his pockets and pulled out a lighter. He flicked it on. ‘It represents a candle’, he said.
‘Okay, you may pass through the Pearly Gates’, Saint Peter said.
The second man reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys. He shook them and said, ‘They’re bells.’
Saint Peter said, ‘You may pass through the Pearly Gates’.
The third man started searching desperately through his pockets and finally pulled out a pair of women’s panties.
St. Peter looked at the man with a raised eyebrow and asked, ‘And just what do those symbolise?’
The man replied, ‘These are Carols.”
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One particular Christmas season a long time ago, Santa was getting ready for his annual trip, but there were problems everywhere. Four of his elves got sick, and the trainee elves did not produce the toys as fast as the regular ones so Santa was beginning to feel the pressure of being behind schedule. Then Mrs. Claus told Santa that her mom was coming to visit. This stressed Santa even more.
When he went to harness the reindeer, he found that three of them were about to give birth and two had jumped the fence and were out, heaven knows where. More stress.
Then when he began to load the sleigh one of the boards cracked, and the toy bag fell to the ground and scattered the toys. So, frustrated, Santa went into the house for a cup of apple cider and a shot of rum.
When he went to the cupboard, he discovered that the elves had hidden the liquor, and there was nothing to drink. In his frustration, he accidentally dropped the cider pot, and it broke into hundreds of little pieces all over the kitchen floor. He went to get the broom and found that mice had eaten the straw end of the broom.
Just then the doorbell rang, and irritable Santa trudged to the door. He opened the door, and there was a little angel with a great Christmas tree.
The angel said, very cheerfully, “Merry Christmas, Santa. Isn’t it a lovely day? I have a beautiful tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?”
Thus began the tradition of the little angel on top of the Christmas tree.
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The Brutal Reality Of Christmas:
1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.
2) Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.
Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.
This means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man- made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second – a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
3) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight.
On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that ‘flying reindeer’ (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine.
We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload – not even counting the weight of the sleigh – to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison – this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
4) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each.
In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second.
Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion – If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now.
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What does Santa suffer from if he gets stuck in a chimney?
Claustrophobia!
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Two blondes decided that this Christmas they wanted to cut down their own Christmas tree. So they drove two hours into the country and walked deep into the woods to find the perfect Christmas tree. They had planned the trip well, especially considering that they were blond. They were dressed warmly with boots, warm coats and hats. They had a chain saw, hatchet, a bag to protect the tree and rope to drag it back to their car. Every detail was covered.
They searched and searched. They had gone to all this trouble, nothing but the prefect tree would do. They searched for hours through knee deep snow and biting wind. Finally, five hours later with the sun beginning to go down, one blonde says to the other, “I can’t take this anymore. I give up! There are hundreds of beautiful trees out here. Let’s just pick one whether it’s decorated or not!”
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And my favourite:
Be naughty – save Santa the trip.
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Future-proofing
Gypsy fortune-tellers are fascinating. I saw one hard at work when I was about 8 years old. Beautiful to watch. The theatrics, the swirling clothing, the crystal ball, all created a sense of wonder in me.
I’m just as fascinated today with those who again claim they can predict the future. Only this time, some of them are dressed up in a charlatan outfit, they’re plastered all over the social media, and they’re peddling fear and unease about our collective lives up ahead.
And why?
To sell some deceitful program that will allay our fears, or require us to trust their fool-proof system for storing our hard-earned cash. Or perhaps to encourage us to live in a bomb-proof shelter somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert.
Here’s a reality check for you. No-one can accurately predict the future. Oh, we can generalise with a series of trends, and we can determine some probable futures by analysing present patterns of behaviour. We can calculate how many 10-year olds there will be in 5 years from now. Just count how many 5 year-olds we have right now.
But can we accurately predict the share market movements through this year, or whether a major accident will occur in 3 months from now, or whether you will win lots of money in a lottery? No we can’t.
Naturally, most of us would prefer to have some degree of certainty about our future, which is why we keep hoping that the fortune-tellers will be accurate. But they basically won’t be. So here’s the next best option: Future-proof yourself.
And what does that mean? Well…. It means that you adopt a series of strategies and mindsets that will give you the best possible chance of thriving through whatever happens up ahead.
For now, here are some suggestions on future-proofing your life, your family, your work, your school, your workplace:
And lastly, if you’re involved with kids in any way (as a parent, a teacher, a relative), I beg of you to not scare the heck out of them about the future. I’m not sure why some adults do it. Maybe it’s a power thing, like: “It’s all gonna be awful, but I’ll save you.”
Oh please. Get over it. If you push too hard with that negative line, they’re hardly going to feel positive about their world up ahead. And even worse, they might not even bother to help create that better world up ahead.
Look at the last 50 years of world history. There have been so many pending calamities (world starvation; millennium bugs), and yet somehow we get through them intact.
Inspire kids about the possibilities with their lives, and of the planet in general. And then we’re more likely to see a future that is beneficial for us all, because they’ll help to create it.