It’s Christmas Eve 2025, and NORAD is celebrating seven decades of one of the weirdest, most enduring traditions in North American military history, that began with a typo: tracking Santa Claus.
A misprinted phone number in a 1955 Sears Christmas ad sent excited kids calling a top-secret Cold War command centre. Tonight, on the 70th anniversary of that mistake, it’s ballooned into a global, AI-enhanced logistical monster, and it’s more calculated than the wholesome myth lets on.
The Myth vs. The Machine
The legend is short and sweet: a kid dials the wrong number, reaches an unlisted Continental Air Defense Command line, and Colonel Harry Shoup picks up the “red phone.” Shoup, likely realizing the Soviets weren’t dropping nukes, softens up and plays Santa. Pure holiday magic.
What turned it into a tradition was his PR officer, Colonel Barney Oldfield, who spotted pure gold. In the paranoid peak of the Cold War, the military desperately needed to prove its expensive new radar network actually worked. What better demonstration than “detecting” a sleigh from the North Pole to show the tax-paying public that the military was “guarding” the continent?
It was a cynical flex disguised as feel-good PR, and it worked so well that generations of kids believed it into reality.
2025: Scaling Santa’s Tracker
Seven decades later, this is no longer a few officers on a hotline. It’s a cloud-powered, multinational spectacle.
- 70 Years Running: 1955–2025
- The AI Edge: For the 70th anniversary, NORAD has gone full AI, partnering with OpenAI to launch “Radar the Elf,” an AI-powered assistant, and “Santa’s Toy Lab,” where generative AI turns kid descriptions into printable colouring pages
- 1,500+ Volunteers staff the NORAD Santa Operations Center at Peterson Space Force Base
- Zero Cost to Taxpayers: The operation is bankrolled by corporate “grease” – Microsoft, Google, HP, AWS, and Verizon provide the servers, AI muscle, and & even food for volunteers
- The Web-Call Upgrade: In a move for global inclusion, noradsanta.org now features a web-calling option, allowing kids without phone plans to connect directly to the ops center via their browser
The Binational Heart: A View from the Windsor-Detroit Border
Living on the Windsor-Detroit line, I’ve always felt the cross-border pulse of this thing.
When CONAD morphed into NORAD in 1958, Canada didn’t just sign a defence pact – we signed on for the Christmas spirit too.
Every year, Santa gets a ceremonial escort into North American airspace by the Royal Canadian Air Force. Tonight, RCAF pilots will “intercept” the sleigh guided by Rudolph.
The next time you look across the Detroit River, remember: the same North Warning System sensors watching for real-world threats are currently pinging a heat signature from a single red nose. It’s the ultimate “dual-use” tech.
The language softened with the geopolitics as much as the technology improved. During the Cold War, it was “intercepts” and “bogeys.” Today, it’s “heritage flights” and “friendly escorts.” For 24 hours, the world agrees to dial down the tension and embrace a little organized whimsy.
The Bottom Line
NORAD Tracks Santa is proof that even the most hardened institutions have space for humanity. Colonel Shoup could have barked at that first kid and hung up back in 1955; instead, he and Barney Oldfield kicked off a seven-decade tradition that outlasted the Cold War itself.
It is an operation of immense reach. In 2024, the program saw approximately 32 million website views, with dedicated volunteers fielding some almost 400,000 calls to the 1-877-HI-NORAD hotline.
Tonight, the radars are hot, the AI elves are online, and the CF-18s are on standby. Somewhere up there, Santa’s cleared for continental entry—and thanks to a mix of high-tech infrastructure and human heart, the whole world is watching.
Keep your eyes on the skies and an eye out for Santa Claus (and read my piece about how Santa Claus is legitimately Canadian – he has a Canadian Passport and a Postal Code: H0H 0H0).
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