NORAD tracking Santa with a huge team of volunteers this Christmas Eve
If you and your family will be tracking Santa on Christmas Eve, you have Colorado Springs-based NORAD and its nearly 1,000 volunteers to thank.
Every Christmas Eve NORAD, officially known as North American Aerospace Defense Command, puts together tools and pulls volunteers to help people around the world track Ol’ St. Nick as he does his annual expedition around the globe.
The annual tradition began in 1955 when The Gazette printed an ad from Sears that contained a number for children to call Santa. The wrong number was listed and instead of calling Santa kids called Air Force Col. Harry Shoup — the on-duty commander at the Continental Air Defense Command. NORAD replaced CONAD in 1958.
“They got the call and just decided to act like they knew where he was,” Master Sgt. Ben Wiseman said in an interview. “And that’s how it all started.”
NORAD uses three methods to be able to track Santa over Christmas Eve: radar, satellites and once Santa enters American airspace NORAD deploys fighter jets (wink, wink) to continue tracking him, Wiseman said.
Wiseman said that last year NORAD received over 150,000 calls to track Santa, and with about 500 volunteers they were able to actually answer over 56,000 of those calls.
This year, with no restrictions due to COVID-19 like in 2021, Wiseman said there will be more than 900 volunteers helping out on Christmas Eve. Volunteering to work at the call center this year was so popular that Wiseman said they were at capacity on volunteers just 24 hours after releasing the volunteer sign-up forms.
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“We run it (the call center) from 4 a.m. to midnight on Christmas Eve, and the whole time it’s just packed with people,” Wiseman said. “It’s such a great environment all day … . It’s amazing.”
Wiseman will be on sight on Christmas Eve, something he described as a “bucket list item” to be able to do.
“Who else is going to track Santa,” Wiseman said he told his daughter when she asked why he had to work on Christmas Eve.
NORAD has several methods for you and your family to track Santa on Saturday, including:
Online at www.NORADsanta.org or at gazette.com/santa-tracker
By phone: Call 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723)
On Twitter: Follow @NORADSanta for the latest updates
On Instagram: NORADtrackssanta_official
On Facebook
On your smart home devices, including Amazon Echo
Apps on iTunes and GooglePlay
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