The Christmas tradition has become almost universal in scope: Children from all over the world follow Santa Claus as he sweeps the earth, delivering gifts and defying time.
Each year, at least 100,000 children contact the North American Aerospace Defense Command to inquire about Santa’s location. Millions more follow online in nine languages, from English to Japanese.
On any other night, NORAD is scanning the skies for potential threats, like a Chinese spy balloon last year. But on Christmas Eve, volunteers in Colorado Springs ask questions like: “When is Santa coming to my house?” and “Am I on the naughty or nice list?”
“There’s screaming and laughter and laughter,” said Bob Sommers, 63, a civilian contractor and NORAD volunteer.
Somers often says during the call that everyone should be asleep before Santa arrives, prompting parents to say, “You hear what he said? We have to go to bed early.”
NORAD’s annual tracking of Santa has been going on since the Cold War, before ugly sweater parties and Mariah Carey classics. This tradition continues regardless of government shutdowns, such as those in 2018 and this year.
Here’s how it started and why the phones keep ringing.
The original story is a Hollywood story
It started with a child’s accidental phone call in 1955. A Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears ad encouraging children to call Santa, listing the phone number.
called a boy. But he made it to the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canadian effort to monitor potential enemy attacks. Tensions were growing with the Soviet Union, along with fears about nuclear war.
Air Force Colonel Harry W. Shoop picked up an emergency-only “red phone” and was greeted by a small voice who began reciting a Christmas wish list.
“He kept it going for a bit, and then he took a breath, and then he said, ‘Hey, you’re not Santa,’” Schaub told the Associated Press in 1999.
Realizing that the explanation would be lost on the young man, Schaub summoned a deep, pleasant voice and replied: “Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I am Santa Claus. Have you been a good boy?”
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Schaub said he learned from the boy’s mother that Sears had printed the top-secret number by mistake. He hung up, but soon the phone rang again with a little girl reciting her Christmas list. Fifty calls a day followed, he said.
In the pre-digital era, the agency used a 60-by-80-foot (18-by-24-meter) glass map of North America to track unidentified objects. One employee jokingly drew Santa and his sleigh over the North Pole.
Tradition was born.
“Note to children,” began an AP story from Colorado Springs on Dec. 23, 1955. “Safe passage for Santa Claus was assured Friday into the United States by the Continental Air Defense Command.”
In a possible reference to the Soviets, the article noted that Santa was protected from possible attack from “those who do not believe in Christmas.”
Is the origin of the story nonsense?
Some pesky journalists have criticized Schaub’s story, wondering whether it was a typo or communication error that prompted the boy to call.
In 2014, technology news site Gizmodo cited a story published by the International News Service dated December 1, 1955, about a child’s call to Shoup. The article, which was published in the Pasadena Independent newspaper, stated that the child reversed two digits in Sears’ number.
“When a childish voice asked COC Commander Colonel Harry Shoop, if there was a Santa Claus at the North Pole, he answered more harshly than he should have – considering the season:
“There may be a man named Santa Claus at the North Pole, but he’s not the one I’m worried about coming from that direction,” Schaub said in the brief article.
In 2015, The Atlantic questioned the influx of calls to the confidential line, while suggesting that Shoup had a penchant for public relations.
Phone calls aside, Shoup was indeed media savvy. In 1986, he told Scripps Howard News Service that he recognized an opportunity when an employee drew Santa on a glass map in 1955.
A lieutenant colonel promised to erase it. But Schaub said, “Leave it there,” and called Public Affairs. Shoup wanted to boost the morale of troops and the public alike.
“It made the Army look good — like we’re not all a bunch of snobs who don’t care about Santa Claus,” he said.
Schaub died in 2009. His children told the StoryCorps podcast in 2014 that it was a misprinted Sears ad that prompted the phone calls.
Later in life, he received letters from all over the world, said Terri Van Curen, daughter. “People say, ‘Thank you, Colonel, for your sense of humor.’
A rare addition to the Santa story
The NORAD tradition is one of the few modern additions to the centuries-old Santa story that has endured, according to Jerry Buller, a Canadian historian who spoke to the AP in 2010.
Bowler, who wrote the book “Santa Claus: A Biography,” said advertising campaigns or movies try to “hijack” Santa for commercial purposes. By contrast, NORAD takes a key element of Santa’s story and looks at it through a technological lens.
In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Air Force Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham explained that NORAD radars in Alaska and Canada — known as the Northern Alert System — were the first to spot Santa.
It leaves the North Pole and usually heads to the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean. From there it moves west, following the night.
“That’s when the satellite systems we use to track and identify targets of interest every day start to come into play,” Cunningham said. “A probably little-known fact is that Rudolph’s nose, which glows red, emits a lot of heat. So those satellites are tracking Santa through that heat source.
NORAD has an app and website, www.noradsanta.orgwhich will track Santa on Christmas Eve from 4 a.m. to midnight Mountain Standard Time. People can call 1-877-HI-NORAD to ask live operators about Santa’s location from 6 a.m. to midnight Mountain time.
