The Christmas tradition has taken on an almost global reach: children around the world follow Santa Claus as he travels the earth delivering gifts and defying time.
Each year, at least 100,000 children call the North American Aerospace Defense Command to ask about Santa's location. Millions more follow him online in nine languages, from English to Japanese.
On any other night, NORAD scans the skies for potential threats, like last year's Chinese spy balloon. But on Christmas Eve, volunteers in Colorado Springs answer questions like, “When is Santa coming to my house?” and “Am I on the naughty or nice list?”
“There's screaming and giggling and laughter,” said Bob Sommers, 63, a civilian contractor and NORAD volunteer.
Sommers often says during the call that everyone should be asleep before Santa arrives, prompting the parents to say, “Do you hear what he said? “We have to go to bed early.”
NORAD's annual tracking of Santa Claus has endured since the Cold War, before ugly sweater parties and Mariah Carey classics. The tradition continues regardless of government shutdowns, like the one in 2018 and this year.
This is how it all started and why the phones keep ringing.
The origin story is Hollywood style.
It all started with a child's accidental phone call in 1955. The Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears ad encouraging children to call Santa, listing a phone number.
A boy called. But it came to the Continental Air Defense Command, now NORAD, a joint U.S.-Canada effort to detect potential enemy attacks. Tensions with the Soviet Union were rising, along with anxiety over nuclear war.
Air Force Colonel Harry W. Shoup picked up a dedicated “red phone” for emergencies and was greeted by a small voice that began reciting a Christmas wish list.
“He went on a little bit, took a breath, and then said, 'Hey, you're not Santa,'” Shoup told The Associated Press in 1999.
Realizing that the young man would miss an explanation, Shoup summoned a deep, cheerful voice and responded, “Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I am Santa Claus. Have you been a good boy?
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Shoup said he learned from the boy's mother that Sears mistakenly printed the top-secret number. He hung up, but soon the phone rang again and a young woman was 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) plexiglass map of North America to track unidentified objects. One staff member jokingly drew Santa and his sleigh over the North Pole.
The tradition was born.
“Note to Children,” began an AP article from Colorado Springs on Dec. 23, 1955. “The Continental Air Defense Command assured Santa Claus of safe passage to the United States on Friday.”
In a likely reference to the Soviets, the article noted that Santa was protected against possible attacks by “those who do not believe in Christmas.”
Is the origin story a farce?
Some cranky journalists have criticized Shoup's story, questioning whether a misprint or dialing error prompted the boy's call.
In 2014, the technology news site Gizmodo cited a December 1, 1955, International News Service story about a child's call to Shoup. Published in the Pasadena Independent, the article said the boy invested double digits in the Sears number.
“When a childish voice asked COC commander Colonel Harry Shoup if there was a Santa Claus at the North Pole, he responded much more abruptly than he should have, considering the season:
'There may be a guy named Santa Claus at the North Pole, but he's not the one I'm worried about coming from that direction,'” Shoup said in the short article.
In 2015, The Atlantic magazine questioned the flood of calls to the secret line, although it noted that Shoup had a talent for public relations.
Phone calls aside, Shoup was a media expert. In 1986, he told Scripps Howard News Service that he recognized an opportunity when a staff member drew Santa on the glass map in 1955.
A lieutenant colonel promised to erase it. But Shoup said, “Leave it there” and called public business. Shoup wanted to boost the morale of both the troops and the public.
“Well, it made the military look good, like we're not all a bunch of snobs who don't care about Santa Claus,” he said.
Shoup died in 2009. His children said on the StoryCorps podcast in 2014 that it was a poorly printed Sears ad that sparked the phone calls.
“And later in his life he received letters from all over the world,” said Terri Van Keuren, one of his daughters. “People say, 'Thank you, Colonel, for having, you know, this sense of humor.'”
A rare addition to the Santa story
The NORAD tradition is one of the few modern additions to Santa's centuries-old story that have endured, according to Gerry Bowler, a Canadian historian who spoke to the AP in 2010.
Advertising campaigns or movies try to “kidnap” Santa Claus for commercial purposes, said Bowler, who wrote “Santa Claus: A Biography.” NORAD, on the other hand, takes an essential element of Santa's story and views it through a technological lens.
In a recent interview with the AP, Air Force Lt. Gen. Case Cunningham explained that NORAD radars in Alaska and Canada, known as the northern warning system, are the first to detect Santa.
It leaves the North Pole and normally heads for the international date line in the Pacific Ocean. From there it heads west, following the night.
“That's when the satellite systems we use to track and identify targets of interest every day start to work,” Cunningham said. “A probably little-known fact is that Rudolph's nose, which glows red, emanates a lot of heat. And then those satellites track (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.