Volunteers track Santa

Associated Press

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Colo.

Tens of thousands of children call NORAD on Christmas Eve eager to hear how far Santa is from their town, but the volunteers answering the phones have a welcome bit of news for parents, too: St. Nick won’t stop at homes unless all the kids are asleep.

Volunteer Liz Anderson said that when she tells kids that, she will sometimes hear parents say, “See! I told you.”

Tracking Santa’s travels, a celebrated tradition at the North American Aerospace Defense Command, unfolded Friday for the 55th year.

It takes four months of planning to marshal the 1,200 volunteers, 100 telephones, 30 laptops and two big projection TV screens the exercise requires, NORAD spokeswoman Joyce Frankovis said. All the labor is volunteer. Google, Verizon, Air Canada, defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and others chip in.

On Friday, volunteers answered phone calls and e-mails from two conference rooms in a building not far from NORAD’s headquarters. In a separate room, a three-member team fired out tweets and Facebook updates, checking against a schedule marked with a secrecy warning that said “Santa’s Eye Only.”

Civilian and military staff wore blue Santa hats with “Special Operations Elf” written on the white trim.

“It is tremendously fun,” said Jim Jenista, NORAD’s deputy chief for joint training exercises who has been volunteering to answer the phones for nearly a decade.

Any inquiry into the technological particulars of just how they do it is met with a polite rebuff and a cryptic explanation involving the magic of Christmas.

NORAD Tracks Santa, the official name of the exercise, began in 1955 when a Colorado Springs newspaper ad invited kids to talk to Santa on a hot line. The phone number had a typo, and dozens of kids wound up dialing the Continental Aerospace Defense Command in Colorado Springs, the predecessor to NORAD.

The officers on duty played along and began passing along reports on Santa’s progress. It’s now a cherished ritual at NORAD, a joint U.S.- Canada command that monitors the North American skies and seas from a control center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs.

Volunteers answered 74,000 phone calls and 3,500 e-mails from around the world last year.

“It’s really ingrained in the NORAD psyche and culture,” said Canadian Forces Lt. Gen. Marcel Duval, the deputy commander of NORAD, who pitches in to field French-language calls on Christmas Eve. “It’s a goodwill gesture from all of us, on our time off, to all the kids on the planet.”

He is careful to say that tracking Santa doesn’t interfere with NORAD’s other job — watching out for enemy threats to the North American continent.