I am celebrating Christmas this year by sharing with you my 400th column for The Bryan County News! This is a labor of love I started 800 weeks ago back in 2010 and I am proud to say I have never missed a deadline for my column which appears every two weeks (called a ‘fortnight’ in England). This might not seem like a very festive topic to begin with, but it is full of the Christmas spirit which makes the holidays so special. The story explains how America’s early warning system for nuclear war, Santa Claus, a disappointed child, a newspaper typo, and a sympathetic US Air Force Colonel came together 70 years ago to create “The Santa Claus Tracker”.
The world was on high alert back in 1955. It was the height of the Cold War with the USSR, and the prospect of nuclear war was a major concern. It had been only a decade since the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan to end The Second World War, weapons of mass destruction were proliferating, and the possibility of escalation of tensions between the USSR and the West was constantly in the headlines. School children practiced hiding under their desks in case of attack, which was of course unlikely to help but shows how embedded these concerns were in the American psyche.
In the early 1950s the US military established a multi-service (Navy, Army and Air Force) unified command structure to monitor any incoming arial attack against the 48 contiguous states. It was called the Continental Air Defense Command, or CONAD. Extensive early warning radar sites and systems were set up across the country to act as an early “trip wire” against air attack, and it was headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado at Ent Air Force Base. On the commander’s desk sat a somber red phone which was the line exclusively used to contact the White House in case of incoming attack. It had never been used.
One snowy night in December 1955, Air Force Colonel Harry Shoup was in command at CONAD. After a rather routine and boring shift, with no sign of any trouble in the skies over America, something happened that startled him and his team, something that had never happened before. The red phone started ringing.
After staring at the phone for what must have seemed like an age, Colonel Shoup and his team regained their composure and he answered the phone. Following a long pause, Shoup was amazed to hear the voice of a young girl asking if he was Santa Claus!
Thinking it was a practical joke, Shoup was stern in his reply, but after realizing the child was serious, he softened and did not want to disappoint the young girl. So he told her the location over the skies of North America where he thought Santa would likely be at that moment. After hanging up, the phone rang again with another child asking the same question. Over the next several hours dozens of children called in and the team laughed and cheerfully fielded calls and reported Santa’s fictitious location.
After asking to speak to one of the children’s parents, the mystery was solved. The Sears department store in Colorado Springs had run a Christmas ad in the local newspaper that day and, you guessed it, there was a typo in the number to contact Santa. Amazingly these calls went to one of the most secret telephone numbers in the world.
When Christmas Eve came around, one of Shoup’s team jokingly put a picture of Santa on up the board used to track unidentified aircraft. The United States Air Force recognized the PR benefits in this story, and CONAD’s public affairs officer informed the press that Santa was being tracked. According to Atlantic Magazine, the Air Force said in a press release that “CONAD, Army, Navy, and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the U.S. against possible attack from those who do not believe in Christmas”.
A couple of years later, CONAD became part of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), but the tracking of Santa continued. ‘NORAD Tracks Santa’ is now one of the Department of War’s largest and most successful community outreach programs. It has reported on Santa’s movements every Christmas Eve since its inception in 1958, and according to www.norad.mil “Each year, the NORAD Tracks Santa Website receives several million unique visitors from more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Volunteers typically answer more than 130,000 calls to the NORAD Tracks Santa hotline from children across the globe”. Today this happy and light-hearted initiative is funded by a variety of donors and corporate sponsors and staffed by hundreds of volunteers.
While there are multiple phone lines and social media outlets that can keep you updated as to Santa’s current location, I suggest you go straight to the original source at www.noradsanta.org.
In the spirit of the holidays, I will leave you with a quote from Judy the Elf in the 1994 movie Santa Clause “Seeing isn’t believing. Believing is seeing.”
God Bless America and Merry Christmas!
Lesley grew up in London, England and made Georgia her home in 2009. She can be contacted at lesley@lesleyfrancispr. com or via her PR and marketing agency at www.lesleyfrancispr.com.