Children and adults around the world will be able to follow Santa Claus’s imaginary journey through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), a 70-year-old tradition that dates back to the Cold War.
The website noradsanta.org allows people to follow Santa Claus’s journey in nine languages, including Portuguese.
For the first time this year, those interested in meeting Santa can call through the show’s website, which organizers say will be easier for people outside of North America.
More than a thousand volunteers will be answering calls on Christmas Eve, in a growing initiative that, last year, received around 380 thousand calls, reported the Associated Press (AP).
With its usual mission to scour the skies in search of potential real threats in North America, such as Chinese spy balloons in recent years, NORAD runs a telephone exchange in Colorado Springs (state of Colorado) on Christmas Eve where volunteers answer questions from little ones, such as “When is Santa Claus coming to my house?” and “Am I on the naughty or nice list?”
NORAD’s annual tracking of Santa Claus has been going on since the Cold War. It all started with an accidental phone call from a child in 1955, when the US and Canada were focused on the Russian threat and a possible nuclear war.
A boy called NORAD and the call reached Air Force Col. Harry W. Shoup, who answered it on a “red phone” for emergencies only. On the other side, the boy began reciting a Christmas wish list.
“He went on for a while, took a deep breath and said, ‘Wait, you’re not Santa Claus,'” Shoup told the AP in 1999.
So as not to disappoint the child, Shoup replied in a deep, cheerful voice: “Ho, ho, ho! Yes, I’m Santa Claus. Have you been a good boy?”
Officially, the mistake resulted from a store ad encouraging children to call Santa Claus for gifts, which was published in a Colorado Springs newspaper with an error in a digit that made up the top-secret NORAD number.
After Shoup hung up the phone, it soon rang again with a young woman reciting her Christmas list. Fifty calls a day followed, he said.
In the pre-digital era, the agency used a 60-by-80-foot map of North America to track unidentified objects. A member of the team jokingly drew Santa Claus and his sleigh over the North Pole and the tradition was born.
Colonel Kelly Frushour, NORAD spokesperson, said, jokingly, that Rodolfo’s nose (Santa Claus’s reindeer) emits a thermal signature similar to that of a missile, which is detected by NORAD satellites.
Last year, Frushour said a little girl was distraught to learn that Santa Claus was on his way to the International Space Station, where two astronauts were being held.
“Fortunately, when the call ended, Santa Claus had already left for another destination and the child was reassured to know that he was not trapped in space and would arrive home later that night,” Frushour added.
A man with special needs named Henry, who calls every year, once asked if the pilot of the jet escorting Santa around North America could put a note on the plane letting Santa know he was already in bed and ready to meet him, said Michelle Martin, a NORAD employee and Navy veteran.
“I don’t know if our pilot can catch him fast enough. He just waves and walks away,” he recalled telling Henry.
The NORAD tradition is one of the few modern additions to the century-old story of Santa Claus that has endured, according to Gerry Bowler, a Canadian historian who spoke to the AP in 2010.