A beloved tradition continues: NORAD set to track Santa for 69th year

The NORAD Tracks Santa website will go live Sunday, Dec. 1, 2024. The website will feature a countdown to Santa's annual sleigh ride journey across the globe as he delivers presents to children all across the world on Christmas Eve. NORAD Tracks Santa is now in its 69th year. In this file photo from Dec. 24, 2022, Majoraca Weber, center, speaks to a caller at the NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Center. Each year, volunteers work in two hour shifts on Christmas Eve to answer as many as 60,000 calls about Santa's whereabouts.
Parker Seibold, The Gazette file
Continuing a beloved tradition now in its 69th year, North American Aerospace Defense Command will again track Santa Claus’ sleigh ride journey across the globe as he delivers presents to children all over the world.
On Sunday, the military-run, all-volunteer tracking operation will launch its NORAD Tracks Santa website, noradsanta.org. The website features Santa’s North Pole Village, including a countdown until Santa’s annual Dec. 24 journey, plus games, a movie theater, holiday music, a web store and more.
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The website is available in nine languages, a Friday news release from NORAD states: English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese and Korean.
Parents can also download the official NORAD Tracks Santa smartphone app, available on the Apple App and Google Play stores. There’s also NORAD Tracks Santa Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) pages, and it will be available on Amazon Alexa, SiriusXM and OnStar.
On Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, trackers worldwide can call 1-877-HI-NORAD for real-time updates on Santa’s location from live operators, beginning 6 a.m. to midnight Mountain Time. Visitors to the NORAD Tracks Santa website can also see Santa’s flight from 4 a.m. to midnight Mountain Time on Dec. 24.
The annual tradition was born nearly 70 years ago when, in 1955, Sears Roebuck ran an advertisement in The Gazette with a phone number for children to call Santa.
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But one of the digits in the phone number was wrong. Children trying to call Santa instead reached the on-duty commander at the Continental Air Defense Command, which would later be known as NORAD. Air Force Col. Harry Shoup kindly played along and acted as Santa, and a tradition was born.
NORAD is a U.S. and Canada bi-national organization that prevents air attacks against North America, responding to unknown, unwanted and unauthorized air activity near and within North American airspace.