Standard Deviations: How do you put a price on what Santa does?
Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus, played by LeeRoy Ford and his wife Linda, wave to crowds as they ride down Washington Blvd. during the Electric Light Parade on Saturday, Nov. 26, 2016, in downtown Ogden.
Really? There’s an honest-to-goodness thing called a Santa Index?
Somewhere out there, as the saying goes, a Christmas elf just drowned a baby reindeer.
Apparently, every year the website Insure.com produces a “Santa Index,” which attempts to place a monetary value — in the form of an annual salary — on the job of one Mr. Kris Kringle.
In a nutshell, the website used a preselected list of tasks matched to occupations and wage data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics to determine that St. Nick earned a salary of $146,308.51 in 2016. And in case you were wondering, that’s a 2.2 percent increase over what they say he pulled down the year before.
Yes, yes. I know it’s all in fun. (At least, as much fun as one can wring out of trying to place a crass price on the warm fuzzy that is Santa Claus.) But can we at least be realistic here? I mean, this Santa Index has more holes in it than a post-Trump-presidency ozone layer.
• RELATED: Where to see Santa in Ogden, Layton, Farmington, Northern Utah
See, what Insure.com supposedly does is take all the “jobs” Santa does — running a workshop, piloting a flying sleigh, conducting labor negotiations with elves, and a dozen other generalized tasks — and comes up with a value for all of his hard work. But the problem is, I highly doubt Santa does half the stuff Insure.com has him doing.
For example, they’ve got Santa driving a snowplow at the North Pole for 30 minutes a day, 360 days a year. They’ve also got him spending an hour a day taking care of the reindeer; wrapping gifts 12 hours a day for two weeks straight; and reading children’s letters an hour a day for 100 days.
Yeah. Like he doesn’t have people for all of those jobs.
They’ve also got Santa making $14.52 an hour for going down the chimney — a wage they arrived at by lumping him in with the BLS occupation title “Building Cleaning Workers, All Other (Chimney Sweeper).” But frankly, unless the Jolly Old Elf is pausing to scrub all that creosote off the flue, it hardly seems worth twice the federal minimum wage.
If Santa were being paid for what he does, I’d see him more as a chief executive officer running a multinational Christmas-gift manufacturing and delivery service. Which means he should be making well north of $20 million a year.
I base that salary on the fact that Heather Bresch, CEO of the price-gouging EpiPen maker Mylan N.V., had a total compensation package worth $18.9 million in 2015. And I can’t even begin to comprehend a world where Santa Baby makes less than The Grinch Who Stole Health Care.
• RELATED: Mylan’s EpiPen fiasco can’t be unseen
Ah, but the point is moot, because everyone knows Santa doesn’t do it for the money. He does it for the milk and cookies — for which Insure.com’s Santa Index lists him getting paid $21.06 an hour as an “agricultural inspector,” of all things
And while we’re on the subject of that whole milk/cookies thing …
There are an estimated 125 million households in the United States alone. Even if you figured only 10 percent of homes put out a treat for Santa, that’s roughly 12.5 million cookies and accompanying glasses of milk.
And, according to Insure.com, he does it all in about 10 hours. So on Christmas Eve, Santa’s going to have to sample a staggering 20,000 cookies and glasses of milk. Per minute. For an entire night.
No wonder the guy has a bit of a weight problem.
But I suppose the unkindest cut of all is the fact that Insure.com has even managed to monetize Santa’s trademark “Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night!” For purposes of the index, the website estimates Mr. Claus spends .01 hours a year — that’s about 36 seconds — playing the part of, in BLS parlance, “Public Address System and Other Announcers.” And those people make $19.44 an hour.
Meaning, 19 cents of Santa’s $146k a year is for being polite and wishing folks a Merry Christmas and a good evening? THIS is what the Santa Index has reduced the holiday to?
Annnnd, somewhere out there Frosty the Snowman just held up a liquor store.
Contact Mark Saal at 801-625-4272, or msaal@standard.net. Follow him on Twitter at @Saalman. Like him on Facebook at facebook.com/SEMarkSaal.