NORAD helps you track Santa’s travels

The annual “Santa Tracker” provided each holiday season by the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) is currently tracking St. Nick’s Christmas travels once again.

The interactive NORAD Santa Tracker is accessible at www.NoradSanta.org.

NORAD has been “tracking” Santa via its high-tech instruments since 1955 with its festive annual program designed to show children how the red-suited, gift-giving fellow is making his way to various chimney entrances as night falls around the globe on Dec. 24.

The Colorado Springs-based command center’s program is reported to have begun when a local Sears store ran a newspaper ad purporting to list a telephone number which kids could use to dial up Santa before Christmas. But by coincidence, the number for NORAD was listed instead.

With Santa-related calls pouring in, the duty officer that evening, Col. Harry Shoup, told his phone operators to give the kids updates on Santa’s location as he whisked around the globe kicking off a tradition that continues to this day.

NORAD’s Santa Tracker is a lot more sophisticated than it was in the mid-1950s. Thousands of volunteers manning special phone lines handle scores of calls per hour on Christmas Eve, thousands of emails from around the globe are received and answered as part of the program, a sophisticated, interactive Web site complete with Google Analytics lets Santa trackers follow his progress over the Internet, and the Santa Tracker initiative even has Twitter and Facebook accounts.

NORAD Tracks Santa is a special part of the holidays for many families around the world and there are many people working behind the scenes to spread the magic of the holidays this time of year.