As hard as it may be to believe, it is indeed December. And while some of us may be dreaming of a Christmas snow, let’s face it, kids all over are hoping that when Santa’s making that list and checking it twice, their name is in boldface, italics, underlined and followed by an exclamation point under “Nice.”

So with all this extra effort being made at this time of year, we feel pretty confident in saying that most younger kids are gonna end up on Santa’s gift list, which left us wondering something decidedly critical when it comes to local data: Where  is Santa going to be feeling the most pressure when conducting his annual delivery? The maps below are symbolized according to the number of children age 4 and younger and the number of children age 5 to 9.

Our examination of Santa’s Christmas night stress level relies on the following assumptions:

1. Kids in these age groups are most likely to be the true believers who are working double-time to impress Santa. So Census tracts with more kids younger than 9 are the places where Santa’s really gonna be feeling the pressure to literally deliver.
2. Typically we prefer looking at rates because that helps control for varying population sizes in the tracts (or any other geography). But when it comes to predicting Santa’s stress, it’s the sheer number of kids that will affect the speed at which he has to get those presents under the tree. Think about it: A Census tract with 20 kids in a population of 100 and a tract with 200 kids in a population of 1,000 both have a rate of 20 percent. But which tract would you volunteer to take on for assisting in present deliveries?

(Check out the data note below the maps and before the exploration tool for some really important disclaimers about the in-the-name-of-fun maps that follow.)

The image below shows the number of children younger than 5 at the Census tract level throughout the 10-county area. The highlighted Census tracts have the most children in this age group in the 10-county area: Tract 506.06 in Gwinnett County has 2,290 children age 4 and younger in a population of 25,421; tract 234.18 in DeKalb County has 1,757 in a population of 17,562; and tract 103.01 in Fulton County has 1,709 in a population of 18,602.

The image below shows the number of children ages 5 through 9 at the Census tract level throughout the 10-county area. The highlighted Census tracts have the most children in this age group in the 10-county area: Tract 907.01 in Cherokee County has 2,136 children ages 5 through 9 in a population of 21,523; tract 507.24 in Gwinnett County has 1,892 in a population of 18,619; and tract 103.01 in Fulton County has 1,810 in a population of 18,602.

In the name of fun, we’ve shaded these maps on numbers rather than rates. We stress the word fun because this is violating a major best practice in choropleth maps (to throw a little cartographic terminology at you), which as a rule should be shaded according to rates, ratios or another statistic that controls for widely fluctuating population sizes and/or geographic spaces. Check out Mark Monmonier’s How to Lie with Maps for the best dissection of this and many other cartographic challenges (read: map misuses). For professionalism’s sake, we have included rate data in the exploration tool below, but it does open to the same age 0-4 population map you saw in the beginning.

While we feel for Santa’s many Christmas night challenges, we would never end a Monday Mapday without providing best-practice maps.