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Here comes Santa Claus, Here comes Santa Claus
By Linda | December 4, 2008
Yes, I know that they’re supposed to be nestled all snug in their beds with visions of sugar plums bla bla bla… But it’s even more fun to let your little Science Junkies track Santa’s realtime progress on Christmas Eve via state-of-the-art military technology courtesy of NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command)!
The tradition began In 1955 when a Sears store ran an advertisement encouraging children to call Santa Claus on a special telephone hotline. Due to a printing error, the phone number given was the hotline for the Director of Operations at the Continental Air Defense (CONAD). Colonel Harry Shoup took the first Santa call on Christmas Eve of 1955 from a six-year old boy who began reciting his Christmas list. Shoup didn’t find the call funny, but after asking the mother of the second caller what was happening, then realizing the mistake that occurred, he instructed his staff to give Santa’s position to any child who called in. Thusly, a tradition was born.
In 1958 the governments of the United States and Canada combined their national domestic air defenses into the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and continued the tradition. For many years to follow, media outlets would call in to the Norad Santa hotline and provide regular updates to the public via radio broadcasts. In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robertson took over the program and expanded it to the Web, giving the tradition global accessibility.
This year marks the fifty-third anniversary of NORAD’s annual tracking of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. In 2007 NORAD began using Google Earth to track Santa Claus in 3-D, displaying updates every 5 minutes. The site now gets well over 1 billion hits!
Each year from 2 a.m. MST December 24th to 2 a.m. Christmas morning, volunteer service members and their families answer emails and man the Santa watch hot-lines. All along his route, Santa’s progress is reported and the web site regularly updated to display a CGI-rendered Santa flying over one or more major cities in the time zone where it is midnight. These are viewable as videos which also include a voiceover from a member of NORAD staff (and sometimes a celebrity voice). Santa’s voyage begins as he leaves the North Pole, visiting first New Zealand and then moving his way throughout the globe to make his last delivery in Hawaii.
The following clip shows Santa on a previous year’s flight over Reindeer Lake, Manitoba Canada.
You can access NORAD’s Santa Tracker at: www.noradsanta.org
You may email NORAD’s Santa tracking team at: tracking@noradsanta.org
You may send email to Santa directly at: NorthPole@OfficialSantaMail.com
You may phone NORAD’s Santa Hotline at: 1-877-HI-NORAD
Topics: Technology, The Petri Dish |
