Christmas is just around the corner, and as the holiday season is approaching, Santa Claus is all set to make his appearance around the world. Like every other year, NORAD will be tracking Santa this year as well.
NORAD Tracks Santa is an age-old traditional Christmas-themed community outreach program where the North American Aerospace Defense Command pretends to track Santa, who is believed to travel around the world delivering gifts to children on Christmas Eve. NORAD started tracking Santa in 1958. It also answers questions from curious children around the world.
However, NORAD's Santa tracking tradition did not begin on purpose; rather, it all began after a Colorado Springs newspaper misprinted Santa's number and a call came through to a Colorado Springs' Continental Air Defense Commander.
Decades-old Christmas tradition Norad Tracks Santa explained
The decades-old Christmas tradition began before NORAD's annual event was established. The tradition first originated from a Sears department store that placed an advertisement in a Colorado Springs newspaper that invited children to call Santa Claus. However, due to one misprinted digit, calls began ending up to Colonel Harry Shoup, a crew commander at Colorado Springs' Continental Defense Command.
Shoup was confused when he got the first call from a child asking about Santa. Shoup did not want to disappoint the child, so he pretended to be Santa and talked to him. After this first call, numerous children around the country began calling Shoup, thinking they were calling Santa. Due to such massive numbers of calls, Shoup asked to pick up the phone every time a child called and answered them with a made-up current location for Santa. Later, Shoup's colleagues placed a picture of Santa on a board to track aircraft in the sky, which ultimately led Shoup to come up with the idea of tracking Santa as a PR opportunity for CONAD. The press release confirmed that CONAD will continue to track and guard Santa Claus and his sleigh.
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Over the next few years, CONAD's Santa Tracker attained wide popularity, and finally, NORAD (North American Air Defense Command) took over this responsibility in 1958. NORAD Tracks Santa is completely dependent on corporate sponsorship and relies on volunteers. According to the reports, each of the volunteers attends around 40 calls per hour, and they collectively handle nearly 12,000 emails around the world. The Santa Tracker is going to celebrate 69 years on the Christmas Eve of 2024.
"We now have received over 260,000 calls. So it's grown exponentially," Brigadier General Derek J. O'Malley said. "For NORAD, our mission is to monitor and defend our airspace in North America, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So really, this is just a natural extension of that mission."
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