The jolly gent, Santa Clause, has already hit Australia, New Guinea, Indonesia and parts of China. You can follow him all day long, and late into the night at the Norad tracking site which is updated every five minutes! Just be sure the kids are in bed before he hits your town.
To speak to a NORAD Santa Tracker in person:
Call toll free: 1 (877) Hi NORAD or 1 (877) 446-6723
Local, overseas: 1 (719) 556-5211 (cost incurred overseas)
Hearing Impaired: Contact your current relay service
If you have Google Earth you can follow him there in 3D Links are at the Norad tracking site…
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!
From Connecticut Man1
And a Merry Christmas too! 🙂
Merry Christmas!
This is a warrantless intrusion on Santa’s privacy.
Lets just say he better have a green card.
A Green card just gives him permission to enter and work in the US.
In order to actually cross the boarder, he’ll need to give his finger prints, and given his suspiciously jovial manner, probably submit to a retinal- and/or full biometric-scan. Plus, every package will need a customs form and to be put through an x-ray scanner, with random ones additionally tested for explosives residue.
And the reindeer – they won’t even be allowed across the border unless they’ve passed quarantine.
Merry Christmas to you all from France!
The local newspaper had the story of how the NORAD Santa Tracker came to be. It’s a fascinating story, and it might just be worth the full treatment sometime when I can tell it before Christmas.
In brief, in 1954 a national retailer — I think it was Sears, but I’d have to go look it up — published a phone number you could dial to talk to Santa. Problem is, the local paper misprinted the number, and the number they printed actually rang the Red Phone at NORAD headquarters underneath Cheyenne Mountain. The phone that wasn’t supposed to ring unless it looked like a shootin’ war was going on or about to start.
The first child to call that number was greeted by a rather surly colonel who explained that no, he wasn’t Santa and he wanted to speak to the boy’s mother. She explained what was going on and why they had called. At first it was somewhat annoying, as you might guess, but after a few calls the people at NORAD started to get into the spirit of the thing. The colonel eventually went to his superiors and explained what had happened and convinced them that having a phone number that children could call to track Santa’s progress across the sky would be a great PR move for NORAD. The rest is history.