Tracking Santa on Christmas Eve

Merry Christmas Eve everyone! We all have our Christmas Eve traditions and activities, so today I'm going to share one of my favorite traditions: tracking Santa.

For all you naughty nuggets out there who will brush this off because "Santa doesn't exist." Well you know what, maybe YOU don't exist. Maybe this is because I've always been a big believer in Santa, and I always will be. Anyways back to tracking Santa.

Every year on Christmas Eve, NORAD tracks Santa while he makes his yearly journey on their website. To follow along click here. But NORAD didn't always track Santa, in fact this whole thing occurred due to a typo, according to an interesting article from CNN.

According to CNN, 60 years ago, a Sears in Colorado Springs ran an ad for their Santa hotline. Except the phone number was a misprint, and it listed the number for the Continental Air Defense Command center (which would eventually become NORAD) instead. So children kept calling and asking to speak to Santa. But instead of telling the children they dialed the wrong number one colonel got the idea to tell the children he wasn't Santa, but he would track him on the radar. And thus a tradition was born!

Of course you can still call the hotline, 1-877-I-NORAD (446-6723,) but the most popular thing to do is just track him on the website and watch Santa fly in real time. If you go to NORAD's website, a 3D view of where Santa's current location will automatically appear. At the top of the screen, you can see his last location, where he’s headed next and the number of gifts that have been delivered (approximately.) You can also zoom in and out and all around to see where Santa has already been.

NORAD also has a Santa Cam which includes video footage of Santa's journey! But good luck getting it to work, I've been wanting to watch these videos for the last 20 minutes. But NORAD also has a Youtube channel, although the videos aren't currently up they'll be up eventually.

When I was growing up, tracking Santa was my favorite part of Christmas Eve. I'd probably ask my mom every five minutes where Santa was and where was he headed next. I'd plan my bed time around his location, you know, to make sure I went to bed before Santa made it to my house. To this day I still track him. He currently is on his way to Greenland, just so you know. And if/when I have future spawns of mine own, I'll share this tradition with them.

So what are you waiting for?! Let's track Santa all night long! And have a merry Christmas Eve. Until tomorrow.