He made a list, checked it twice, and now Santa Claus is traveling the world on the busiest day of the year. With Amazon workers on vacation and American Airline flights briefly grounded on Christmas Eve, Santa (and some holiday cheerleaders) may need some extra help to get their Christmas presents on time.
Every year, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, provides “real-time” tracking of Santa and his reindeer starting at 6 a.m. ET on Christmas Eve, when St. Nick leaves the North Pole and begins his journey delivering hundreds of millions of people. gifts for children. (As of this writing, Santa was heading west in the Indian Ocean.)
To see where Santa is at any given moment, simply visit NORAD’s website and click on “View Santa’s Route on a 2D Map” and look for Santa’s big red hat symbol. (If confused, click Instructions.)
Other cool features are a summary chart of all the gifts he’s sent (2,681,010,867 at this writing), plus camera icons that link to a local Wikipedia summary along his route.
A brief history of high-tech Santa tracking
In case you’re wondering: The tradition dates back to 1955, when a young boy mistakenly called a Colorado military command center to speak to Santa.
According to NORAD, that night the duty commander convinced the child that he was indeed Santa Claus. And after more calls came in, Air Force Col. Harry Schoep assigned a duty officer to continue monitoring the phones, a tradition that has continued ever since.
Wait, can kids still call and talk to Santa?
Yes! Today, interested children and their parents can call 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) to speak with Santa. Each year, volunteers typically received more than 130,000 calls. The more tech-savvy and phone-shy among us can simply follow Santa on the NORAD Tracks Santa app, Instagram, OnStar, Amazon Alexa and SiriusXM.
We wish you happy holidays from all of us Fast Company. Now go bust out those cookies – Santa is literally on his way!