Tracking Santa

While all the adults are busy cooking up our Christmas feast, the kids are busy tracking Santa's progress throughout the world using the NORAD Tracks Santa site. NORAD stands for North American Aerospace Defense but today, instead of scanning the skies for possible threats against the US and Canada, they're educating children about world geography while getting them even more excited about Santa's arrival.

My kids have been sitting, glued to the computer screen, looking at YouTube videos showing "satellite images" of Santa flying out of the North Pole and over the Great Wall of China. Each segment is narrated by a different NORAD technician and are full of fascinating facts. We learned that Santa's flying speed is 100 times faster than the Japanese bullet train and that the International Space Station is 249 miles above the earth. There also a world map that fills with presents as Santa visits.





NORAD has been involved with Santa tracking since 1955 when Sears erroneously printed an ad to call Santa with the NORAD phone number.with the wrong phone number. The first call was taken by the previous NORAD commander, Harry Shoup, who apparently had a deep voice. The child on the phone asked him where Santa was at the moment and he played right along and told her he would check the radars. When more calls started pouring in, he assigned someone to take the calls, and a tradition was born.