A family is seated around the holiday table, the Christmas dinner is finished, and every one content. The man at the head of the table states, his voice full of excitement, tells the children that, according to the latest report, Santa has been spotted, making his way in from New York. The kids light up, brimming with excitement, and the adults around the table join in, playing along. And then the idiot in the leisure suit says, stone-faced, not even slightly joking, “You serious, Clark?”
It’s one of the greatest moments from National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. A classic.
Clark was, of course, referring to the NORAD Santa Tracker. A Christmas tradition that got its accidental start in 1955.
Col. Harry Shoup was a disciplined, straight-laced man. As he should have done, he took his job with the Continental Air Defense Command, now known as NORAD, very seriously. It was the Cold War, after all. Col. Shoup had two phones on his desk, a black and a red one. Now, everyone knows a red phone is an important phone. Only two people in the world had the number to the red phone. That is until Sears & Roebuck decided to do something adorable.
Col. Shoup was alone in his office when the red phone rang. He answered, expecting someone at the Pentagon but heard a small voice tentatively asking, “Is this Santa Claus?”
Ahead of the Christmas holiday season, Sears decided it would be adorable to set up a hotline where kids could call and talk to Santa. The marketing team at Sears was not wrong; it was a precious idea. But, getting ahead of themselves, the proofreader gave it a once over, decided it was fine, and ran with it. What are the chances that there would be a typo and everyone in the country who received a Sears Christmas catalog – so, everyone – would now have a direct line to a highly secure military command center?
As the calls began to pour in – and pour in they did – Col. Shoup assigned a couple of young airmen to work the Santa phone line, the Pentagon and the military long giving up on securing the line. The young men took the Santa calls one step further by telling the callers not only that they were talking to Santa, but where Santa was at the time! Col. Shoup, a lifetime military man, went with it, fully embracing his role as Santa tracker by placing calls to local radio stations stating Santa’s exact location and flight path. Thus, a tradition was born. Now it’s a website. People all over the world log on every Christmas Eve to track Santa’s progress as he makes his journey around the world.
And to think, it all happened by mistake.
Source: Seed & Sow November 2023 Edition
