The heartwarming story behind the Santa tracker: How a child’s accidental phone call to a top-secret US air base began a 70-year Christmas tradition which spans the globe today
It is something used by parents across the world to show their children where Santa Claus is on this magical night.
The Santa Tracker brings the magic of Christmas alive as children are able to imagine that the sleigh going across the globe is carrying their presents.
But where does this tradition come from?
It all started nearly 70 years ago when, in the midst of the Cold War, a five-year-old child accidentally called a top-secret emergency line which was reserved only for the US President and a four-star general.
As the phone rang, the officers on the watch floor of the Continental Air Defence Command (CONAD) in Colorado Springs who were in charge of defending the skies above the US and Canada stiffened – there were only two people who could call that line.
The officers were expecting the worst – the outbreak of World War 3.
The command’s director of operations Colonel Harry Shoup answered the call. And on the other end was a child asking ‘Is this Santa Claus?’
‘Hello, is this Santa?’ the child asked Colonel Harry Shoup, who was stationed at the Continental Air Defense Command in Colorado Springs when he answered the confidential line in early December 1955
Every day NORAD tracks airplanes, missiles, space launches and anything else that flies in or around the North American continent
Nearly seven decades ago, in the midst of the Cold War, a five-year-old child inadvertently called a top-secret emergency line reserved only for the US president and one four-star general
According to the colonel’s daughter Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank, and replied: ‘I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center. Who’s this?’
But the child started crying and asked if he was one of ‘Santa’s helpers’.
The Colonel’s family revealed their father was not impressed when he initially answered the phone, according to a 2014 NPR interview, as he thought it was a prank call.
However, when the child began to cry, he quickly changed gears, realising it had been a mistake and mustered a convincing ‘ho-ho-ho’.
The phone call began the tradition of the Santa Tracker, which allows children to track the whereabouts of Father Christmas via a livestream and a phone line answered by volunteers.
It is now operated by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD).
Its digital reach has grown from a tracker website to social media, attracting millions of visitors from over 200 countries and is now available in Korean, among its growing list of languages.
But how did a five-year-old have access to a top-secret phone number only reserved to the leader of the free world and one top general?
The boy’s mother revealed the source of the confusion: a Sears ad containing a phone number to call Santa
Over the decades, NORAD’s Santa mission has expanded, with volunteers fielding around 130,000 calls annually
The confusion began as the department store Sears had printed an advert in the local newspaper which said they could call Santa, Terri explains.
‘They had printed one digit wrong in the phone number. And it was dad’s top secret number.’
The Colonel called the phone company and asked for a new number for his office.
Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was ‘ringing off the hook’ and Shoup told his staff they had to answer the calls as Santa Claus.
In the story told by his daughter, she explained how on December 24 that year her parents had arrived at the base to deliver cookies to those on duty and found it was unusually festive.
They found a drawing of Santa’s sleigh on the tracking board.
She said: ‘Next thing they knew, dad was calling the radio station: “This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs. And we have an unidentified flying object. Why, it looks like a sleigh”,’ says Terri.
Today, NORAD Tracks Santa is a multimedia experience that goes live every December 1, offering a website, games, videos, books and more
Radio stations soon began calling in every hour asking where Santa was.
She was six years old when her father became the ‘Santa Colonel’ and said the continuation of the tradition is his ‘legacy’.
NORAD is a joint organisation of the United States and Canada that defends the continent from potential incoming airborne threats 365 days per year.
Its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), began tracking Santa in 1955.
NORAD replaced CONAD in 1958 and took over the mission of tracking Santa’s flight around the world, and have been doing it every year since.
Every day NORAD tracks airplanes, missiles, space launches and anything else that flies in or around the North American continent.
However on Christmas Eve, they take on the momentous job of following Saint Nicholas on behalf of everyone tucked up in bed waiting.
Their website states: ‘While the tradition of tracking Santa began purely by accident, NORAD continues to track Santa.
‘We’re the only organization that has the technology, the qualifications, and the people to do it. And, we love it! NORAD is honored to be Santa’s official tracker.’
It also reveals that: ‘Based on flight profile data gathered from NORAD’s radar and satellite tracking, NORAD concludes that Santa probably stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighs approximately 260 pounds (before cookies).
‘Based on fighter-aircraft photos, we know he has a generous girth (belly), rosy cheeks from sleigh riding in cold weather, and a flowing white beard.’
Over 1,250 NORAD personnel join in on the Santa Tracker effort each year, answering phone calls and emails about Santa’s progress.
The entire operation is powered by simulation software built by AGI/Ansys.
Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, told Sky News how it unfolds.
‘We have about a thousand people come together to set up the operations centre that is used to track Santa and that allows anyone to call in to check on his whereabouts.’
In 2022, they answered 78,000 calls.
Terri said her father’s story has become so famous that she has had several requests to make a movie out of it.
