Once upon a time, there was CONAD (The American Continental Air Defence Command). Since 1958, this has been known as NORAD (The North American Aerospace Defense Command).
Included in the nitty-gritty that was part and parcel of the workload of the former, passed on to the latter, is literally and figuratively a flight of fancy.
NORAD is responsible for tracking Santa’s Flight across the skies. This will take him past Mount Fuji , 100 times faster than a 500 series Shinkansen bullet train, and also to Britain, France and Switzerland – but for some reason he does not fly across the Mediterranean. This began through whimsical happenstance. There was a Sears Roebuck and Company advertisement with a typo in it. This gave the number of the agency rather than the Santa Hotline one it had been supposed to give.
When a little girl saw the advertisement, in a Colorado Springs newspaper, which said “Hey, Kiddies! Call me direct and be sure and dial the correct number." She obeyed the instructions. Yet she got through to Colonel Harry Shoup, the Director of Operations on duty on December 24, 1955 at the time. He happened to be the right person in the right pace at the right time. Rather than being officious and telling the child she he had a wrong number, the Colonel, perhaps touched by the innocence of the child, decided to ask his staff for the radar readings of the whereabouts of Santa’s Sleigh. The children who called later were given updates – and so a cute tradition was born.
In 1997, Canadian Major Jamie Robertson took over the programme, and went on the www with it. The idea remains to track Santa as he travels across the skies to deliver presents – not only through the original radar, but through satellite systems as well. Thousands of volunteers staff computers and telephones at Cheyenne Mountain and Peterson Air Force Base in order to answer phones and provide Santa updates live – to children, adults, as well as the media.
This tracking scheme has now achieved cult status; this year, Google introduced its own 2D and 3D Google Earth maps, which indicate Santa’s position on lifelike maps. The NORAD Tracks Santa website www.noradsanta.org offers a service in seven languages - English, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish.
This year, new videos of Santa flying over Zurich, Switzerland; Toronto in Ontario, Canada, and Mexico City, Mexico were added on You Tube. Like all the others, it features a voice-over by a member of the NORAD staff, indicating Santa's location, and showing the sleigh, complete with Rudolph’s hooter at full brilliance, approaching the city and then slaloming in the air currents over it, accompanied by the familiar jingling bells.
Those who were after a more personalised service, however, could email his team at noradtrackssanta@gmail.com and get updates sent directly to their inbox. There were also several social networking sites offering the service - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, and TroopTube.tv.
You can watch Santa’s message here www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZ-YkFOfITc, and the one by General Renuart, Commander of NORAD, here www.youtube.com/watch?v=hipMSF5vpA0