The Christmas tradition has become almost universal in scope: Kids around the world do track. Santa Claus As he sweeps the land, gifts are delivered and time is defied.
Every year, at least 100,000 children call in. North American Aerospace Defense Command To find out about Santa's location. Millions more follow online in nine languages, from English to Japanese.
On any other night, NORAD is scanning the skies for potential threats, like last year's Chinese spy balloon. But on Christmas Eve, volunteers in Colorado Springs are asking questions like, “When is Santa coming to my house?” And, “Am I on the naughty or nice list?”
“There's screams and giggles and giggles,” said Bob Sommers, 63, a civilian contractor and NORAD volunteer.
Somers often says on the call that everyone should go to bed before Santa arrives, prompting parents to say, “Did you hear what he said? We have to go to bed early.”
NORAD's annual tracking of Santa has persisted since the Cold War, predicting ugly sweater parties and Mariah Carey classics. The tradition continues regardless of government shutdowns, like in 2018, and this year.
Here's how it started and why the phone keeps ringing.
The original story is Hollywood-esque.
It all started in 1955 with an accidental phone call from a child. A Colorado Springs newspaper ran a Sears ad encouraging children to call Santa, with a phone number listed.
A boy called. But he reached out to the Continental Air Defense Command, now NORAD, a joint US-Canadian effort to detect potential enemy attacks. Tensions with the Soviet Union were rising, along with fears of nuclear war.
Air Force Col. Harry W. Shoup only picked up a “red phone” in an emergency and was greeted by a small voice that began reading off a Christmas wish list.
“He leans forward a little bit, and he takes a breath, then says, 'Hey, you're not Santa,'” Shoup told The Associated Press in 1999.
Realizing that an explanation would be lost on the young man, Shoup called a deep, warm voice and replied, “Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I'm Santa Claus. Are you a good boy?”
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Shoup said he learned from the boy's mother that Sears accidentally printed the top-secret number. She hung up, but the phone soon rang again with a young girl reading her Christmas list. He said that fifty calls came in a day.
In the pre-digital era, the agency used a 60-by-80-foot (18 by 24 m) plexiglass map of North America to track unidentified objects. A crew member jokingly pulls Santa and his sleigh to the North Pole.
A tradition was born.
“Note to children,” began an AP story from Colorado Springs on December 23, 1955.
Possibly in reference to the Soviet Union, the article stated that Santa was protected from possible attack by “those who do not believe in Christmas”.
Is the real story humbug?
Some angry journalists have nitpicked Shoup's story, questioning whether a misprint or wrong dial prompted the boy's call.
In 2014, the tech news site Gizmodo cited an International News Service story from December 1, 1955, about a child's call to Shoop. An article published in the Pasadena Independent stated that the child reversed two digits in the Sears number.
“When a childish voice asked the COC commander, Col. Harry Shoup, if there was a Santa Claus at the North Pole, he replied rather crudely—given the weather:
'There may be a guy named Santa Claus at the North Pole, but he's not the one I'm worried about coming from that direction,' Shoup said succinctly.
In 2015, The Atlantic magazine cast doubt on the flood of calls to the secret line, while noting that Shoup had a public relations flair.
Phone calls aside, Shoup was truly media savvy. In 1986, he told the Scripps Howard News Service that he recognized an occasion when a staff member drew Santa on a glass map in 1955.
A lieutenant colonel promised to erase it. But Shoup said, “You leave it there,” and called for public affairs. Shoup wanted to raise the morale of the soldiers and the people.
“Why, it made the military look good — like we're not all a bunch of little ones who don't care about Santa Claus,” he said.
Shoup died in 2009. Her children told the StoryCorps podcast in 2014 that it was a misprinted Sears ad that prompted the phone calls.
“And later in life he received letters from all over the world,” said Terri Van Curen, a daughter. “People are saying, 'Thank you, Colonel, for, you know, having this sense of humor'.”
A rare addition to the Santa story
The NORAD tradition is one of the few modern additions to the centuries-old Santa story that has survived, according to Gary Bowler, a Canadian historian who in 2010 I spoke to AP.
Bowler, who wrote “Santa Claus: A Biography,” said advertising campaigns or movies try to “hijack” Santa for commercial purposes. NORAD, by contrast, takes an essential element of the Santa story and views it through a technological lens.
In a recent interview with the AP, Air Force Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham explained that NORAD radars in Alaska and Canada — known as the Northern Warning System — are the first to detect Santa.
It originates at the North Pole and generally moves toward the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. From there he goes west after nightfall.
“This is when we use satellite systems to track and identify targets of interest every single day,” Cunningham said. “Perhaps a little known fact is that Rudolph's nose, which glows red, generates a lot of heat. And so they track (Santa) through this satellite heat source.
NORAD has an app and website, www.noradsanta.orgwhich will track Santa on Christmas Eve from 4 a.m. to midnight, Mountain Standard Time. People can call 1-877-HI-NORAD to ask live operators about Santa's location from 6 a.m. to midnight, Mountain Time.