Prince George, B.C. – While many of sound mind and body chose to remain at home surrounded by a warm hearth and hot chocolate, no doubt, the more adventurous citizens of this great city braved a minus 23 air temperature compounded by a minus 33 wind chill in hopes of learning the answer to one of the great questions of all time.

As clearly stated by Political Science Professor and MC Gary Wilson, “one of the enduring and complicated mysteries of the universe: the existence of Santa Claus.” Yes the great Santa Claus debate returned for a 20^th consecutive year to the University of Northern BC.

Upon entry to the Canfor Theatre audience members were offered bribes, cookies from the Yes side and Todd Whitcombe with the No side attempting to sway opinion his team’s way by handing out chocolate loonies (right).

Now, the Anti-Santa team (pictured below) was comprised of the aforementioned Chemistry Professor T. Whitcombe, Sustainability Manager Kyrke Gaudreau and English Professor Kirsten Guest.

They professed the following in support of their argument that Mr. Claus does not exist:

-a miniature sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer would simply not be able to carry everything Santa has to deliver. (If each present weighed just one kg, that total would be over a million tons of presents.)

–Flying reindeer doesn’t work because reindeer are not aerodynamic.

–Time. Santa would have to travel at 15,939,750 km/h to get all of the world’s gifts delivered in one night. Professor Whitcombe states “that would give him an astounding .00276 seconds in order to land, get the bag out, slide down the chimney, drop off the presents, consume the cookies and eggnog, climb up the chimney, feed the reindeer, mount the sleigh and fly away yelling “Happy Christmas to all and to all a good-night.”

–As well the G forces in accelerating to get up to speed would result in the reindeer being stripped of their fur and antlers and Santa’s skin would stretch out for 5 kilometres, flapping in the breeze behind him.

–Santa did exist but is washed up. Santa was born in Norway but moved to the North Pole to have easier access to the globe. He had two reindeer, who produced two more and by 1980 there were over 20-thousand hungry reindeer at the North Pole. Santa started a social media campaign for people to leave milk and cookies; he started freezing the reindeer for January to September to slow down their metabolism, but global warming messed that up.

–Gaudreau contends that by 2010 Santa had 130-thousand reindeer, some of whom were conspiring to overthrow him. Christmas was cancelled for good. Some reports said Santa shave his beard, moved back to Norway and started herding reindeer. Gaudreau believes he kept his beard, traded the sleigh for a fixed gear bicycle and moved to Portland. He says Sanata does exist, just not as we knew him.

–Professor Guest did some de-construction research on Santa and says Santa moved from being a religious figure to being secularized to becoming a figure for corporate consumerism.

–Santa promotes bad grammar with such incorrect statements as “Ho Ho Ho Merry Christmas”, which is a sentence fragment. And “Ho” is an expression of laughter “which made me wonder, is Santa responsible for egregious texting shorthand?”

–Santa’s surveillance techniques are very suspect when you consider he is “contemplating the globe, looking for good and bad people, and over on the other side we have Santa with his telescope looking at you when you’re sleeping. We need to stop this madness, and to all a good night.”

The Pro-Santa team was comprised of International Studies Professor Heather Smith (with the red thingy on her head), Vice-Provost, Student Engagement Bill Owen and Senior Lab Instructor, Geography, Claire Kaufman. The put forward these arguments:

–Smith says that she used to be on the no side but was lost and on the wrong path. “You change, you grow, you have experiences and travel the world. And I have changed. Yay Santa!” And the turning point was a message from her cat.

–The Santa Winter Games are evidence that Santa exists.

–Politicians such as Stephen Harper and George Bush believe in Santa and we know our politicians tell us the truth. “Weapons of Mass Destruction and Santa, same thing. We believed them that time we should believe them now. (sorry)”.

–Winnie-the-Pooh and Charlie Brown believe in Santa and “if you don’t believe them, believe Yoda.”

–Bill Owen put forward the thoughts of his three kids, aged 6, 8 and 10, to prove that Santa is real:

“I think he’s real just because normally when aunties or uncles give you a Christmas present they might have a card in it, and lots of the presents I get don’t have cards in them so I think Santa is real.”

“Yes he is real because he is very large and that means he eats all the cookies but the moms and dads, they would take all the dirty dishes and put them at the counter, not leave them there. Another reason is, if you rip off his beard you’ll see lots of blood.” 8-year-old child.

And the 10-year-old says “Well he makes the world happy and everybody likes him and knows about him.   But Barrack Obama, he’s really powerful and all that, but lots of people don’t know about him.”

–Kaufman says “by this point we’ve pretty much confirmed that he is real.” She says the real story is groundbreaking research focussing on where Santa lives, which will prove that he is real. She says instead of looking at the geographical North Pole we need to look at the magnetic North Pole, which moves from year to year.

Judge Angela Kehler was given the task of weighing the arguments and deciding the victor in this intense debate. She was quite vocal in stating “please let the record show that my being here is a result of ill-timed crossing of paths with Todd Whitcombe and Gary Wilson”, as was the case with Kirsten Guest. Judge Kehler says “as children you’re taught certain things and you grow up with these beliefs, magic and such, and then you get to university and everything you know is shattered. Everything you thought you know you don’t know anymore, but what university has taught me is that all these things, it’s always inconclusive isn’t it, every single time. What I really, really need right now is more evidence before I decide……

And with that appearance of Santa, the declaration “The Yes’s Have It.” For the 20^th year in a row.