Watch Official NORAD Santa Tracker

Santa’s journey around the world for his Christmas deliveries has officially begun!

NORAD s involvement began 60 years ago when a wrong telephone number printed in a newspaper advertisement resulted in children calling for Santa. The practice continued and was taken over in 1958 by NORAD, the bi-national air defense command for North America, run by the governments of Canada and the United States.

You can also watch videos of Santa soar over great landmarks and large cities on the site, as his flight plan takes him overhead, of course.

Sixty years later, there are now 1,250 volunteers manning phone lines to answer questions about the trip.

“I have met some of the volunteers who, one of the reasons they volunteer is because, as a kid, they called NORAD Tracks Santa and it’s part of the family tradition”, Mooney said. Staff at the command center fielded the calls and the operation grew over the years as military and personal technology got more sophisticated.

As of midday USA time on Thursday, Santa’s team had already delivered almost 2 billion presents, mostly across Asia, where in some places it was already Christmas day.

The website is available in eight languages: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline”. “Aren’t you excited that Santa is going to be coming in the morning?”

“Millions of people who want to know Santa’s whereabouts now visit the NORAD Tracks Santa website”, the release said. No app downloads are needed to use the Santa Tracker.

NORAD spokesman Mike Kucharek said a squadron of fighter jets briefly escort Santa’s sleigh when he enters Canadian and USA air space, .