What if Santa worked with China's express delivery network?
Christmas is over, and Santa Claus, if you believe in him, is surely putting his feet up and taking it easy after delivering presents all over the world. With billions of parcels to deliver in one night, surely the man in the red suit could do with a bit of help? Perhaps China and its leading logistics industry could lend a hand.
Previous studies have calculated how many parcels Saint Nick needs to deliver in one night, how many kilometers he needs to travel and even how many calories he needs to consume on Christmas Eve. But with the help of China's massive delivery industry, Santa could even be home in time to celebrate Christmas morning with Mrs. Claus.
So for starters, let's imagine Santa delivers two gifts to every child around the world aged 0-14. According to the World Bank, that's 1.94 billion children, meaning Santa has some 3.88 billion packages to hand out.
That's a wrap
Based on a study by the UK's Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) and The Big Bang UK Young Scientists and Engineers Fair, it takes eight seconds on average to wrap a gift, and with Santa's 3.88 billion-strong mountain of goodies, that means 8.62 million work hours, or 984 years.
No matter how many elves Santa has at the North Pole, it's starting to sound a bit impossible.
But China in 2015 alone created two million new jobs in the parcel and express delivery industry, according to the State Council. If they all worked together on wrapping the parcels, it would only take 4.31 hours, and Santa would be very merry indeed.
Ho ho how to store the gifts?
That's the gifts wrapped, but where can Santa put them? The CEBR calculated that the average gift is 0.008 cubic meters in volume, meaning Santa needs warehouse space of 31.04 million cubic meters, which is equivalent to just over 275,000 double-decker buses.
There's plenty of space in China if Santa is struggling to find room. According to the China Warehousing Industry Bluebook 2016, there are 955 million square meters of warehouse floor space in the country.
Meanwhile, the Global Cold Chain Alliance reports that China has 107 million cubic meters of cold storage space, meaning Santa needn't worry about melted chocolates messing up someone’s stockings.
'Twas the night before Christmas...
Working with China's postal industry in the run-up to Christmas has been easy so far for Santa, but come Christmas Eve the pressure is on.
Because of time differences, Santa has 32 hours of darkness to deliver all of his gifts. With an average 2.5 children per household, he needs to visit 776 million homes in those 32 hours – or 6,736 houses every second.
Mission impossible, right? Not necessarily. Of the two million workers in China's parcel and express delivery industry, 1.2 million are couriers. Let's share out the parcels, giving each courier 3,233 gifts to hand out.
To get everything delivered on time, each courier needs to visit one home every 35.6 seconds. It's a tough ask, but with a sprinkling of Christmas magic, it's more plausible than 6,736 houses each second.
On China's Single's Day this year, some 812 million orders were made through Alibaba's e-commerce platforms on November 11, the world's biggest online shopping festival.
If all 1.2 million couriers were working over that period and again given 32 hours to deliver the parcels, they would have just over 170 seconds per parcel.
A CGTN report on the express delivery industry earlier this year found that couriers can at most deliver around 100 parcels per day. Based on an eight-hour shift, that means one delivery every 288 seconds, meaning they would have to speed up a lot more to deliver Santa's gifts on time.
Of course, Santa uses magical reindeer to travel across the world in such a short period of time, and they could help China's couriers make up some time. However, there are only 600,000 reindeer left in the world, meaning the couriers would have to pair up and share one reindeer between two workers... but perhaps that is pushing things too far...