NORAD Tracks Santa
Years ago I read online that every year NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, a joint organization of Canada and the United States, on Christmas Eve follows Santa Claus as he leaves the North Pole and circumvents the globe delivering presents to the boys and girls. My son and I visited NORAD’s website and joined the millions around the world for the historic first Santa tracking web cast. That was Christmas Eve 1997.
NORAD’s Christmas Eve Santa tracking project, however, goes back decades before. It all started because of a printing error in 1955.
Legend has it that on Christmas Eve in 1955, U.S. Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the director of operations at CONAD, the Continental Air Defense Command–NORAD’s predecessor–got a phone call at his Colorado Springs, Colo., office. The call had come in on one of the top secret lines inside CONAD that only rings in the case of a crisis.
Col. Shoup was expecting to hear that Russia had launched an attack. Imagine his surprise when he heard a tiny voice asked, “Is this Santa Claus?”
Col. Shoup in his annoyance demanded to know who was calling. The tiny voice on the other end of the line, now crying, asked, “‘Is this one of Santa’s elves, then?’”
This was only the beginning of a flood of similar calls that day and days after. The reason behind these calls was a Sears Roebuck advertisement in the local newspaper. The ad 
had a big picture of St. Nick and text that urged, “Hey, Kiddies! Call me direct…Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time day or night…”
The phone number in the advertisement, however, was off by a digit. Instead of connecting with Santa (at Sears), callers were actually dialing in on CONAD’s hot line!
To Col. Shoup’s credit, after cooling off, he told a nearby airman to answer the calls and just pretend to be Santa. He eventually decided to offer the countless kids calling in something useful: information about Santa’s progress from the North Pole. This is the origin of the annual Christmas Eve NORAD Santa tracking tradition.
NORAD uses four high-tech systems to track Santa – radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets. Over the years, this project has grown into the Santa Tracking Operations Center, which involved 1,275 people in 2008. There would have been more operational staff had there been more room for them. Most of those people are volunteers who come into NORAD’s Colorado Springs headquarters on Christmas Eve to answer phone calls and e-mails. In 2006, half a million calls and over 12,500 e-mails were handled from 210 territories. The site now gets well over 1 billion hits. Most of those contacts happened during the 25 hours from 2 a.m. on December 24 through 3 a.m. on Christmas Day that the operations center is up and running.
Over the years NORAD has devoted much energy and effort to make this annual event even more enjoyable for its visitors. In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robertson took over the NORAD Tracks Santa program and expanded it to the Web. In 2007 Google came aboard as a technology partner which enables NORAD to incorporate its data on Santa’s whereabouts into special 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth representations.
People can now follow Santa’s progress on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube and TroopTube.
Visitors can now follow Santa Claus’ journey in Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.
Click here to visit NORAD’s English Santa tracking page.
Merry Christmas – Happy Holidays – Seasons Greetings to Everyone!
Similar Posts:
- Try this Word Puzzle
- GOOG-411
- Thanks for the music, Eartha Kitt!
- Straight No Chaser – The Christmas Can-Can
- iPhone 4 Antenna Problem: Design Defect Confirmed – Consumer Reports video
