The 62-year-old tradition of keeping tabs on jolly old Saint Nick continues this year and is getting a technological upgrade.
The important task of tracking Santa’s whereabouts on Christmas Eve started in 1955 when a Colorado Springs newspaper ad invited children to call Santa Claus, and mistakenly listed the number for the hotline at the U.S. Continental Air Defence Command.
Norad Spokesperson and Royal Canadian Navy Lt. Marco Chouinard told CTV News that when the first child called the man who answered the phone that night, he thought it was a prank. But when he figured out what happened, he happily played along.
Now about 1,500 Norad volunteers answer phone calls and emails and post updates about Santa's storybook world tour on social media.
“We’ve been doing this for 62 years and we love doing it,” Chouinard said.
This year, Amazon’s voice-activated Echo device, Alexa, is also helping out. Thanks to Norad’s Track Santa, Alexa can pinpoint the location of Saint Nick over Christmas Eve.
The Norad tracking app was launched Sunday in the U.S. and Canadians can also track Santa with Alexa using KAYAK’s flight tracker.
Children might also be wondering how Saint Nick manages to finish all his work in just one day. After six decades of tracking Santa, Norad has some theories.
“For us, it looks like it takes a day, but for Santa, based on Norad intelligence that we've gathered over the years, it looks like he operates in his own time-space continuum,” explained Choinard.
So while it may seem that Santa takes only 24 hours to get around the world, in Santa’s alternate dimension, it could take weeks and months to hand-deliver the toys to all the girls and boys.
Children can also monitor Santa’s travel on the Norad website, via the Track Santa app, or by calling Norad at 1- 877-446-6723 (1-877-Hi-NORAD).
