NORAD Celebrates 60 Years of Tracking Santa Claus

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) is tracking Santa’s flight and whereabouts as he makes his annual journey around the world delivering gifts to the world’s children.

An interactive, constantly updating map shows where Santa is at all times.

Google and Microsoft are continuing their separate Internet holiday traditions that allow children, no matter how grown up they might be, to track Santa online as he makes his way around the world on Christmas Eve.

When he realised what had happened, Colonel Harry Shoup – who came to be known as the “Santa Colonel” – quickly told his staff to answer the calls with an update on Father Christmas’s current position. Visitors to the site may learn about Iceland’s Christmas Cat or how residents of New Zealand, where it’s summer, celebrate Christmas with barbecues.

In places like Alaska, however, remote NORAD identification technicians who monitor computer screens 24 hours a day for possible air incursions also spend Christmas Eve serving as official Santa “trackers”. The website is available in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese.

NORAD’s involvement began 60 years ago when a wrong telephone number printed in a newspaper advertisement resulted in children calling for Santa. If you want to talk to Santa, call this number.’ Well the number on the ad was misprinted.

Writing to fans on Facebook, NORAD said: “Thank you for letting us be part of the magic Santa”.

You better watch out! The website also shared a video of Santa’s initial takeoff. NORAD’s live feed showing where Santa and his reindeer are can be seen below. But, ever since that one fateful night, its high-tech tools of detection are repurposed to find and track Santa.