9/86Percentage of teenagers’ favorite songs that they say are about sex, violence, satanism, or drugs: 7
Percentage they say are about love: 26
12/87Average amount of time a child spends in Santa Claus’s lap at Macy’s (in seconds): 37
12/87Number of U.S. cities and towns named Santa Claus: 3
10/88Number of women appointed Official Salem Witch by Governor Michael Dukakis: 1
12/88Percentage of child psychologists who advise parents of pre-school children to “confirm Santa’s existence”: 40
10/89Amount paid at auction last year for the hat worn by the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz: $33,000
4/90Estimated amount Viking Penguin has spent on extra security since publishing The Satanic Verses: $3,400,000
Estimated amount Viking Penguin has earned from sales of the book: $3,400,000
12/91Estimated number of cookies that will be left out for Santa Claus this Christmas Eve: 84,000,000
8/91Percentage of Americans who believe they have healed physical ailments “using the power of mind”: 25
12/93Age at which a child’s belief in Santa Claus peaks: 4
12/93Chances that a Jewish-American child believes in Santa Claus: 1 in 4
12/93Pages of forms an applicant must fill out to be considered for the position of elf at Macy’s: 10
3/93Average number of operations performed each week by Joanna Corti, a Santa Fe, New Mexico, “psychic surgeon”: 15
10/94Rank of Virginia, among states with the largest ghost population, according to the Ghost Research Society: 1
12/94Chances that a Santa Claus appearing in a mall this month has a college degree: 2 in 3
8/94Average amount left by the tooth fairy in 1969, per tooth: 25¢
Average amount left today: $3.30
2/96Amount U.S. intelligence agencies have spent on psychics since 1972: $20,000,000
12/97Rank of milk among professional Santas’ favorite drinks with cookies, according to the American Dairy Association: 1
5/97Percentage change since 1995 in the average tooth-fairy payment, per tooth: +10
11/98Number of ornamental figures based on German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Germany’s Garden Gnome Museum: 14
1/99Chance that a Jewish Jerusalemite agrees that sovereignty over the city’s holy sites “ultimately belongs to God ”: 1 in 3
Chances that a Palestinian Jerusalemite believes this: 2 in 3
10/99Minimum number of U.S. Army bases in which space has been reserved for Wiccan soldiers’ seasonal rites: 8
11/99Number of films about Y2K disasters that Hollywood studios are planning to release in the next four months: 0
10/00Number of U.S. houses that are really haunted, according to the Ghost Research Society: 789
12/00Rank of Bill Clinton among the “most important people in the world today,” according to U.S. schoolchildren: 1
Rank of the Pope, J. K. Rowling, and God, respectively: 2, 13, 19
Rank of “myself”: 11
10/01Minimum number of garden gnomes relocated to the forest since 1996 by France’s Garden Gnome Liberation Front: 6,000
9/01Chance that an eighty-year-old American is left-handed: 1 in 100
Chance that a ten-year-old is: 1 in 7
1/02Number of years after being executed as witches that six Massachusetts women were exonerated last fall: 309
10/02Size in acres of a billboard that a Chinese town is constructing next to its ancient giant Buddha: 10
4/02Price that a Canadian firm charges for a ten-inch cement “Garden Liberal” resembling Prime Minister Jean Chretien: $50
2/03Number of female characters with supernatural powers on major U.S. network-television programs last season: 20
6/04Chances that God exists, according to a British physicist working as a risk analyst in Ohio: 2 in 3
12/05Miles per hour of two low-flying Danish fighter jets in February when they startled a reindeer named Rudolph to death: 450
Amount his owner, a professional Santa, was paid by the Air Force in September to buy a new Rudolph: $5,000
8/05Number of members of the Iraqi parliament who worship not only Muhammad but a fallen angel named Lucifer: 3
12/06Number of worldwide incidents last Christmas of “Santarchy,” which involves roving mobs of unruly Santas: 29
Number of fruitcakes that drunken Santas catapulted into the air at the event in Portland, Oregon: 6
12/07Percentage of shopping-mall and party Santas who believe that children “lie when they say they’ve been good”: 54
5/07Amount the British military spent in 2002 researching whether psychics could find terrorist hideouts: $35,000
Chance that a psychic it tested could, blindfolded, identify some portion of the contents of a sealed envelope: 1 in 3
5/08Percentage of Britons who believe that Winston Churchill is a mythical figure: 23