Deasさんのこのエントリー、面白いなぁと思って、昨日、夕飯の時に我が家の子供たちにも話してみました。
子供たちが出した結論は…∴サンタさんは一人ではない。でした。
サンタ村のようなところに大勢のサンタさんが住んでいて、クリスマスの夜はみんなで一斉に配りに歩くんだそうです。（ちなみに「サンタ」と呼び捨てにすると、「サンタさんに失礼だろう！」と怒られました。(^^;)「ママがそんな失礼なことを言っていると怒ってこの家には来てくれないかもしれない」と心配もしているようでした。）
“1秒間に900軒以上配らなければいけない”のところで、私が、「もしかしたら、サンタさんは魔法みたいなものをつかって、一度に900軒分のプレゼントを煙突から入れることができるのかもしれない」と言ったら、上の息子(9歳）は「うーん…そうかもしれないけど、ぼくの考えでは、サンタさんはちゃんと一人ずつ、”一年間いい子だったね”って寝てる顔を見て、置いて行ってくれると思う」とまじめに悩みながら言ってました。(^^)
みんなでわいわいと、それぞれの自論を披露し合って、楽しい夕飯になりました。楽しい話題をありがとうございました。(^^)/
-English translation-
I thought your entry was interesting, so last night during dinner at our house, I brought it up in conversation with my children.
The children’s conclusion seemed to be that…Santa Claus is not one person.
They posited that many Santas live in a place like a Santa-village, and each Christmas night they all walk around to distribute presents at the same time. (By the way, when I just called him “Santa” [presumably without the "Claus" or "-san" suffix], they became angry, saying “isn’t that rude to Santa?” (^^;) It was as though they were worried that “If Mama says such rude things Santa will be angry and he might not visit our house!”)
When I explained that “in 1 second’s time, Santa must distribute presents to more than 900 houses” I said, “Maybe Santa is using some sort of magic to put 900 presents at one time into various chimneys.” My oldest son, who is 9 years old, said, “Yeah, that might be true, but I think that Santa visits each child one by one, looks upon their sleeping faces that convey that they have ‘been a good child for a whole year,’ carefully lays down the present, and goes.” He seemed serious and distressed as he said it. (^^)
It became a fun dinner, with everyone being lively and making their own arguments about it. Thanks very much for the fun topic. (^^)/
marukoさんのコメントDec 20th 2008 07:57
This warmed my heart. I submitted my translation of the Santa Claus: From An Engineer’s Perspective piece to Lang-8 for revision - see the entry on Lang-8 here. Not only did I get super-fast corrections, like usual, but I also go this comment. Made me smile. 
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This was auto-posted. Deas is trying not to get too comfortable with spandex while learning to scuba dive in the Philippines right now. He’ll be back in January.
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Now - on to the pictures!
Love it.
