Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — One Christmas tradition has become nearly global in scope: Children from around the world track Santa Claus as he sweeps across the earth, delivering presents and defying time.
Another tradition on Christmas: Each year, at least 100,000 kids call volunteers at the North American Aerospace Defense Command to inquire about Santa's location, and millions more follow online in nine languages, from English to Japanese.
Bob Sommers, a civilian contractor and NORAD volunteer, often says on the call that everyone must be asleep before Santa arrives, prompting parents to say, "Do you hear what he said? We got to go to bed early."
NORAD's annual tracking of Santa has endured since the Cold War, predating ugly sweater parties and Mariah Carey classics. The tradition continues regardless of government shutdowns, such as the one in 2018, and this year's near-shutdown.
Here's how it began and why the phones keep ringing.
An accidental phone call
It started with a child's accidental phone call in 1955. The Colorado Springs newspaper printed a Sears advertisement that encouraged children to call Santa, listing a phone number.
A boy called, but he reached the Continental Air Defense Command, now NORAD, a joint U.S. and Canadian effort to spot potential enemy attacks. Tensions were growing with the Soviet Union, along with anxieties about nuclear war.
Air Force Col. Harry W. Shoup picked up an emergency-only "red phone" and was greeted by a tiny voice that began to recite a Christmas wish list — and then the boy realized Shoup wasn't Santa.
Realizing an explanation would be lost on the youngster, Shoup summoned a deep, jolly voice and replied, "Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I am Santa Claus. Have you been a good boy?"
Shoup said he learned from the boy's mother that Sears mistakenly printed the top-secret number. He hung up, but the phone soon rang again with a young girl reciting her Christmas list, the start of nearly 50 daily calls.
In the pre-digital age, the agency used a 60-by-80 foot plexiglass map of North America to track unidentified objects. A staff member jokingly drew Santa and his sleigh over the North Pole — and a tradition was born.
"Note to the kiddies," began an AP story from Colorado Springs on Dec. 23, 1955. "Santa Claus Friday was assured safe passage into the United States by the Continental Air Defense Command."
In a likely reference to the Soviets, the article noted that Santa was guarded against possible attack from "those who do not believe in Christmas."
An unlikely morale boost
Of course, some "Grinchy" journalists have nitpicked Shoup's story, questioning whether a misprint or a misdial prompted the boy's call.
For example, in 2014, tech news site Gizmodo cited an International News Service story from Dec. 1, 1955, about a child's call to Shoup. Published in the Pasadena Independent, the article said the child reversed two digits in the Sears number.
The next year, the Atlantic magazine doubted the flood of calls to the secret line, while noting that Shoup had a flair for public relations.
Phone calls aside, Shoup was indeed media savvy. In 1986, he told the 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 have it erased, but Shoup said, "You leave it right there," and summoned public affairs. Shoup wanted to boost morale for the troops and public alike.
"Why, it made the military look good — like we're not all a bunch of snobs who don't care about Santa Claus," he said.
A legacy never forgotten
Shoup died in 2009, but his children told the StoryCorps podcast in 2014 that it was a misprinted Sears ad that prompted the phone calls.
"And later in life he got letters from all over the world," said Terri Van Keuren, a daughter. "People saying 'Thank you, Colonel, for having, you know, this sense of humor.'"
NORAD's tradition is one of the few modern additions to the centuries-old Santa story that have endured, according to Gerry Bowler, a Canadian historian who spoke to the Associated Press in 2010.
While campaigns or movies try to "kidnap" Santa for commercial purposes, said Bowler, who wrote "Santa Claus: A Biography," NORAD takes an essential element of Santa's story and views 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 warning system — are the first to detect Santa.
"That's when the satellite systems we use to track and identify targets of interest every single day start to kick in," Cunningham said. "A probably little-known fact is that Rudolph's nose that glows red emanates a lot of heat. And so those satellites track (Santa) through that heat source."
The department has an app and website, www.noradsanta.org, that 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 Standard Time.
