Thanks to Ret. Col. Harry Shoup, Millions of Children Track Santa on NORAD

Thanks to the late Retired Colonel Harry Shoup, millions of children around the world tonight will "know" exactly where Santa Claus is on Christmas Eve, and how to track his progress.

For most of the history of Santa Claus and Christmas, children everywhere went to to bed not knowing for sure exactly where Kris Kringle was. They only knew that he would be arriving sometime while they slept. Thanks to the some quick thinking on the part of Colonel Shoup, however, it is now possible to pinpoint Santa's purported whereabouts in the world by using a web based application called 'NORAD Tracks Santa', which shows Santa's location as well as the time to his next destination.

The web based application has been available since 1997, but NORAD, which stands for North American Aerospace Defense Command, has actually been tracking Santa Claus' progress through Christmas Eve since 1958, though at that time it was a phone based program; children would call in to get his location, as opposed to being able to see his location online.

The whole thing actually started as a typo as an ad placed in a newspaper in 1955. The ad, from Sears Roebuck, was designed to direct children to call a Sears store to ask about Santa's location. Presumably it was part of a promotion to get kids equating Christmas and Santa Claus with Sears.

Due to the wrong number in the misprint, however, the number rang, fortuitously enough, at the Colorado Springs Continental Air Defense Command where Colonel Shoup was in charge.

As the story goes, Colonel Shoup thought quickly and instructed those answering the phones to tell the children that they were checking the radar to find out Santa's exact location. They then shared with the children where Santa was...setting off one of the most enduring traditions in modern Christmas history. Three years later, the Colorado Springs Continental Air Defense Commend was replaced by NORAD, and from there the tradition continued.

Colonel Shoup passed away in 2009, but has left behind a legacy that now includes the Internet, Google Earth and Google Analytics as a means of bringing the world together to track Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

As my seven and five year old daughters, and to some extent my two year old son, track Santa's progress around the globe tonight, I'll say a silent word of thanks to Colonel Shoup, who on Christmas Eve all those years ago had a little bit of fun with the kids calling in to find out where in the world Santa Claus was on Christmas Eve.

Source:

http://www.noradsanta.org/en/whytrack.html