Here’s how drunk Father Christmas will get in Northern Ireland if everybody leaves him a drink

But there is one jolly old fellow among us who is set for a very merry festive period indeed – we’re talking of course about Father Christmas.

Boys and girls in the UK traditionally leave out a mince pie and a glass of sherry to help their favourite gift-giver through his delivery shift.

But just how much booze is Santa Claus going to consume on Christmas Eve? The JPI Media Data Unit has done some very scientific calculations to find out the answer.

How many sherries will Santa drink?

Office for National Statistics/National Records of Scotland/Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency figures show there are an estimated [Total households with children] 220039 households with children in Northern Ireland.

If every one of those left him a standard 50ml glass of sherry, old Kris Kringle will make his way through an average of 185,326 Units of alcohol as he travels around NI homes.

That’s based on the average 17% strength of more than 30 different kinds of sherry being sold in the big four supermarkets of Asda, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Morrisons right now – we told you this was scientific.

To give an idea of what a Herculean task this would be, that’s 13,238 times more than Santa’s recommended weekly limit of 14 units.

If everybody left him the strongest type of sherry – 20% ABV – he would consume a whopping 220,039 units.

How much are we really talking?

All those glasses of sherry together would equate to 11001,950 millilitres of booze, or 11,002 litres.

To put that into context, that’s about 138 average sized bathtubs full of fortified wine.

According to the NHS Give Blood website, the average human body holds about 10 pints of blood, or 5.7 litres.

That means the very super-human Father Christmas will have consumed an amount of sherry equal to [Blood in human body] times as much blood as is currently coursing through your veins by the time you wake up on Christmas morning.

Is Santa safe to drive?

The short answer, of course, is absolutely not – but let’s work out the long answer.

Given Santa’s famously portly appearance, we are going to assume he is 5ft 10, and weighs 15 stone – this would put his BMI just on the cusp of the obese range.

We can calculate Santa’s blood alcohol content based on his weight, and the hours since his last drink.

Let’s also assume he spends five hours delivering presents, between 11pm and 4am. If he spent all that time in Northern Ireland alone, he would be 113,238 times over the drink drive limit] times over the drink drive limit by the time he drained the last drop of sherry.

And that’s forgetting all the other children he has to visit across the country.

Hopefully Rudolph’s navigation skills are up to scratch, as we doubt Santa will be much use finding his way home after a session like that. What a champ.