Child advocates would remove the child from the custody of his mother when they discovered she was shacking with a guy (not the child's father) in a barn. In most jurisdictions that would constitute child neglect.

Of course, Mary would have an underpaid court appointed attorney to represent her in the dependent-neglect proceeding, and Joseph would be out of luck once it was determined that paternity could not be established within a reasonable degree of medical certainty through blood or DNA testing(97% probablilty that Joe was the dad is sufficient, but absent divine intervention, that couldn't happen, hmmm?). He would be excluded from juvenile court as a stranger to the proceeding and investigated for possible sexual deviance (all those oxen and asses around), and he would be told that he had no standing to object since he was not the natural father of the child and was not yet married to Mary (by their own admissions they had not yet consummated their union).

The Division of Children and Familly Services would ask the court to order Mary to take parenting classes, and the Court would order that homemaker services be provided as well, since obviously Mary can't keep house properly (the place where the DHS workers forund the child was kept remarkably like a barn). Mary would be allowed to have one visit with Jesus per week at the Centers for Youth and Families. The visit would be one hour long, and supervised by a therapist since Jesus would no doubt be put in therapeutic foster care to prevent psychological damage resulting from the horrible lack of civilization to which he had been exposed at such a tender age.

At the eighteen month dispositional hearing, the court would consider terminating parental rights because of Mary's refusal to bring a paternity suit against Jesus' true biological father (or even to identify him to the satisfaction of the Court). The Court would be appalled at the life choices

Mary would have made: she would have completed her marriage to Joseph (that suspected sexual deviant) and had more children by him, which was obviously contrary to Jesus' best interest. Since Mary and Joseph had fled the jurisdiction with Jesus once to escape encounters with the authorities, they would determine that Mary and Joe had nefarious plans to abscond with the Ward of the State to Egypt again, where they would possibly engage in dangerous and illegal activities with him. Parental rights would be terminated, and Jesus would be put up for adoption.

He would be adopted by the Herods, a well-connected and politically powerful family, who have been searching for just such a child as Jesus. Of course, Jesus will die in the custody of his adoptive family, because that's all they wanted him for in the first place. Social services will NOT have intervened prior to his death because the state social workers could never imagine someone as highly placed as the Herods exploiting children or torturing them to death. The political ramifications for the Herods would have been too severe. In all likelihood, the social service agencies would cover up the death as one occurring from accident, and Herod's good name will be preserved.

'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the nets

Not a mousie was stirring, not even the pets.

The floppies were stacked by the modem with care

In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

The files were nestled all snug in a folder

The screen saver turned on, the weather was colder.

And leaving the keyboard along with my mouse

I turned from the screen to the rest of the house.

When up from the drive there arose such a clatter

I turned to the screen to see what was the matter.

Away to the mouse I flew like a flash,

Zoomed open a window in fear of a crash...

The glow from the screen on the keyboard below

Gave an electronic luster to all my macros.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear

But a little sleigh icon with eight tiny reindeer

And a tiny disk driver so SCSI and quick

I knew in a nano it must be Saint Nick.

More rapid than trackballs his cursors they came,

He whistled and shouted and faxed them by name.

"Now Flasher! Now Dasher! Now Raster and Bixel!

On Phosphor! On Photon! On Baudrate and Pixel!

To the top of the stack. To the top of the heap."

Then each little reindeer made a soft beep.

As data that before the wild electrons fly,

When they meet with a node, mount to the drive,

So up to the screentop the cursors they flew

With a sleigh full of disks and databits, too.

And then in a twinkling I heard the high whine

Of a modem connecting at a baud rate so fine.

As I gazed at the screen with a puzzling frown

St. Nicholas logged on though I thought I was down.

He was dressed all in bytes from header to footer

And the words on the screen said "Don't you reboot 'er."

A bundle of bits he had flung on his back

And he looked like a programmer starting his hack.

His eyes how they glazed, his hair was so scary,

His cola was jolt, not flavored with cherry.

His droll little mouth was drawn up like a GIF

And the pixels of his beard sure gave me a lift.

The stump of a routine he held tight in his code

And I knew he had made it past the last node.

He spoke not a word but looked right at me

And I saw in a flash his file was .SEA.

He self-decompressed and I watched him unfold,

Into a jolly old elf, a sight to behold.

And the whispering sound of my hard drive's head

Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread.

He went straight to his work without saying a word

And filled all the folders of this happy nerd.

And 'tis the whole truth, as the story is told,

That giving a nod up the window he scrolled,

He sprang to the serial port as if truly on fire

And away they all flew down the thin copper wire.

But I heard him exclaim as he scrolled out of sight

"Happy Christmas to All, and to all a good night."

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) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child in each.

3) 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, 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.

4) 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 Queen Elizabeth, the ship, that is.

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enourmous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts 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.

What's a holiday for toothpaste?

"Crest"mas!

What language does Santa speak?

North Polish!

What goes hoho bang, hoho bang?

Santa Claus doing a drive-by.

Three wise men following yonder star through the desert for three days and nights. Finally they came to a manger. The star was shining on a crib with a baby inside. As they were walking to the crib one of the wise men stepped on a rake and the handle flew up and hit him in the nose, "JESUS CHRIST", he shouted. "Hey", said another wise mand, "good name for the kid."

12 pack of Genny

11 rasslin' tickets

10 Tins o' Copenhagen

9 years probation

8 table dancers

7 packs of Redman

6 cans of Span

5 flannel shirts

4 big mud tires

3 shotgun shells

2 huntin' dogs

and some parts to a Mustang GT.

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