Get ready to track Santa with NORAD's help

With only a week left until Christmas, kids can get ready to follow Santa’s path to their homes via www.noradsanta.org. For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s Christmas Eve flight. The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations “hotline.” The director of operations at the time, Col. Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition was born. In 1958, Canada and the U.S. created a bi-national air defense command for North America called the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, which then took on the tradition of tracking Santa. Last year, millions of people who wanted to know Santa’s whereabouts visited the NORAD Tracks Santa Web site. In addition to tracking Santa on the NORAD Tracks Santa home page, you can also track his flight via Google Earth on Christmas Eve.