Christmas Eve: Track Santa’s Progress Before Bedtime

Children world-wide have speculated with racing hearts and imaginations each year on the whereabouts of Kris Kringle as months of anticipation near their Christmas morning crescendo, and NORAD’s new tracking website is once again helping with its Santa-tracking software.

If you’re on the go, you can keep tabs on the Santa with NORAD’s apps for Microsoft, for Google, and for Apple devices.

The service is a 60-year-old tradition by NORAD, the The North American Aerospace Command, who started tracking the Jolly Old Elf’s airborne sleigh and eight tiny reindeer, with Rudolph rounding out the nine Rangifer tarandus (their fancy Latin name) team, in 1955. Computer servers, web site design, video imaging, Santa’s tracking map, and telephone services are all donated, according to NORAD.

Their tradition began with NORAD’s predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), according to NORAD’s brief online history of the practice. That year, a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. ad printed CONAD’s phone number as the one children should use to call Santa. The number put kids in touch with the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.”

Colonel Harry Shoup, director of operations at the time, ordered his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location,  and they continued doing so each year, even after Canada and the US created NORAD, the bi-national air defense command for North America.