Inside NORAD’s holiday command: How the same team that tracks Santa guards North America

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Deep inside a command center that monitors everything from Russian bombers to North Korean missile launches, a handful of service members are preparing for a very different kind of flight pattern — one led by a jolly man in a red suit.

Each December, the North American Aerospace Defense Command — or NORAD — transforms part of its high-tech operations floor into a holiday command post dedicated to tracking Santa Claus. The same radar systems that protect North American airspace will soon be tuned to follow a sleigh moving at high speed from the North Pole.

The Santa mission, now approaching its 70th year, began by accident. In 1955, a Colorado Springs newspaper printed a phone number from a Sears advertisement inviting children to “call Santa.”