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NORAD Santa Tracker can help your child track Santa through Hopkins County on Christmas Eve. Illustration by Jillian Smith via Google Maps
NORAD Tracker keeps tabs on St. Nick on Christmas Eve
Christmas
As parents and children alike prepare for Christmas gift-giving and merry-making, part of the fun tracking Santa Claus’ trek from the North Pole with NORAD’s Santa Tracker, at www.noradsanta.org. For children and their parents, the site is full of both fun and information.
The focus of the website is tracking Santa, but it has plenty of other Christmas-season fun things to do, including accessing information about North Pole and local weather conditions, history about Santa, information about Christmas around the world. Christmas-themed games and activities are also part of the website’s content.
On Christmas Eve, NORAD updates its videos page each hour, for midnight in time zones around the world. Text updates are provided on the website in eight languages and by email as well as telephone, with information offered in French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese and Chinese in addition to English. The site has added more international languages in recent years, attesting to its growing popularity. It also accepts 100,000 or more phone calls a year with a volunteer phone bank.
Starting at 1:01 a.m. Monday, Dec. 24, website visitors can watch Santa make preparations for his flight. NORAD’s “Santa Cams” will stream videos on the website as the jolly old elf makes his way over various locations. Then, at 5 a.m., trackers worldwide can speak with a live phone operator to inquire as to Santa’s whereabouts by dialing the toll-free number 1-877-Hi-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) or by sending an email to noradtrackssanta@outlook.com. Tracking opportunities are also offered through social media on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
Today, NORAD estimates its NORAD Tracks Santa program gets more than 140,000 phone calls a year.
SANTA TRACKER’S HISTORY
NORAD stands for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, part of the U.S. Air Force.
The Santa Tracker mission started even before NORAD was founded. In 1948, the Air Force issued a communique about an early warning radar detecting a sleigh and reindeer to the due north. The Associated Press wrote a story about it, but that was a one-time happening.
It became a regular event in 1955. Reportedly, a child responding to a Sears advertisement in Colorado Springs, Colo., inviting children to talk to Santa on the phone misdialed the number. The call went to the Continental Air Defense Command, a joint military program in the city.
Soon after that call, staff there had drawn a flying Santa on a board for tracking unidentified aircraft, primarily those coming from the North Pole — the direction of likely USSR air launches. A public relations officer jumped on it.
“CONAD, Army, Navy and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the U.S. against possible attack from those who do not believe in Christmas,” Col. Barney Oldfield said in a press release.
The next year, the press called in advance, and it took off from there. NORAD was sending records with messages of Santa’s progress to radio stations in the 1960s.TV commercials came next.
The Santa Tracker took off with the internet. Today, NORAD’s Santa Tracker has a smartphone app.
NORAD partnered with Google Earth when Google released it. Several years later, Google started its own Santa Tracker.
WHO IS SANTA?
The search for Santa best starts with information about Santa Claus, some of which is provided on one of the several subpages at the NORAD Santa Tracker website. Santa Claus is also known as Saint Nicholas or Saint Nick, with “Claus” being a shortened version of “Nicholas” that came via early Dutch settlers in New York.
Saint Nicholas was an early Christian leader. He was the bishop of Myra, a city in what was then called Asia Minor in the fourth century AD in the late years of the Roman Empire, in what is now Turkey. After he was officially declared a saint, his church festival day was eventually set at Dec. 6.
The Dutch shortened form of Saint Nicholas is Sinterklaas. Americans adopted the story as part of distancing themselves from Britain after independence.
American author Washington Irving helped popularize many old Dutch myths, including that of Sinterklaas. He, and the gift-giving associated with him, eventually became connected with Christmas itself. The image of Santa as we know him today started with mid-19th century cartoonist Thomas Nast. He illustrated reprinted versions of Irving books and other things.
YES, HE’S REAL, VIRGINIA
Santa’s place in American life was confirmed in 1897. At the suggestion of her father, 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon wrote the New York Sun newspaper asking if there really was a Santa.
“Dear Editor: I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. PaPa says If you see it in the Sun, it’s so. Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Virginia O’Hanlon”
Francis Church, an editor at the newspaper, responded with what has become one of the most famous editorial pieces.
The second paragraph starts with the well-known, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
Church next wrote, “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
Since then, Virginia’s letter and Church’s response have been made into a TV show, TV movie, musical cantata and another show about the history of the letter, and the editorial column. It has also become a part of other Christmas shows.
SANTA’S REINDEER
Santa’s original eight reindeer, before Rudolph came along, were introduced in the U.S. in “The Night Before Christmas,” by Clement C. Moore. The stanzas discussing them are as follows:
“When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny rein-deer,
with a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St. Nick.
“More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
And he whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name:
“Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now, Prancer, and Vixen!
“On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Dunder and Blixem!”
The names of the last pair were eventually changed into Donner and Blitzen.
CHRISTMAS CAROLS
Some of the most common Christmas carols have their own special histories.
“Jingle Bells,” for example, was originally written as Thanksgiving season music. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” as a song, derives from a booklet written specifically as part of a Montgomery Ward ad campaign. Both songs have inspired numerous parodies.
“Silent Night,” probably the best-known religious carol today, was written for simple guitar accompaniment by Father Joseph Mohr in Austria with Franz Gruber supplying the melody two years later. Contrary to legend, the carol’s creation was not necessitated by a broken organ.
“Hark the Herald Angels Sing” has a historic background. The words were written by Charles Wesley, co-founder of Methodism. The melody comes from renowned classical composer Felix Mendelssohn.