The NORAD Tracks Santa Story

The year was 1955 and the very popular department store by the name of Sears placed an ad in a Colorado Springs newspaper that encouraged kids to call and talk to Santa himself. Some elf that put together the advertisement must have typed in the wrong phone number because instead of kids calling Sears, they were dialing the Colorado Springs’ Continental Air Defense (or CONAD for short).  That night Colonel Harry Shoup was on duty. As the calls started to come in, Colonel Shoup told his staff to provide all the kids that called with Santa’s “current location”. From that day on, a tradition was born.  In 1958 North American Aerospace Defense Command (better known as NORAD which is run by United States and Canada) replaced CONAD but kept the tradition or tracking Santa.

NORAD relies on many volunteers to make “NORAD Tracks Santa” possible, who answer phone calls and emails from about 2 a.m. on December 24^th to 3 a.m. December 25^th. The volunteers answer around 70,000 phone calls and more than 12,000 from more than two hundred countries in that short time frame. With advancements in technology, you can now track Santa on their website www.noradsanta.org and the website is available in eight different languages. Have fun with your family this year and track Santa with NORAD this Christmas Eve.

Happy Hollidays from all of us at TechFarmer!