“Radar Contact with Rudolph”: The Wild Secret History of NORAD’s Santa Tracker

When Colonel Harry Shoup answered the first call from a child asking for St. Nick, he didn’t hang up

photos courtesy of NORAD

the staff of the Ridgewood blog

Ridgewood NJ, every Christmas Eve, millions of families around the world refresh their screens and apps to answer one high-stakes question: Where is Santa Claus right now?

While we take the NORAD Tracks Santa program for granted today, its origins weren’t a planned marketing campaign or a government initiative. It began with a wrong number, a cold-war colonel, and a newspaper misprint that changed holiday history forever.

📞 The “Hotline” Mistake That Started It All (1955)

In 1955, at the height of the Cold War, a local Sears store in Colorado Springs ran a newspaper ad inviting children to call Santa Claus directly. However, there was a typo in the phone number.

Instead of reaching the North Pole, the calls rang directly into the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD)—the high-security operations center tasked with monitoring the U.S. for nuclear attacks.

The “Santa Colonel”

When Colonel Harry Shoup answered the first call from a child asking for St. Nick, he didn’t hang up. Realizing a mistake had been made, he instructed his staff to check the radar for signs of a sleigh. Shoup, who became known as the “Santa Colonel,” transformed a top-secret military installation into a beacon of holiday hope.

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🚀 How the Military Tracks a Flying Sleigh

When NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) was formed in 1958, it inherited the mission. Today, tracking a supersonic sleigh requires some of the world’s most advanced technology:

• Radar: The North Warning System—a string of 47 radar installations across Canada and Alaska—picks up the moment Santa departs the North Pole.

• Satellites: Geostationary satellites use infrared sensors to detect heat. Specifically, they track the intense infrared signature from Rudolph’s red nose.

• Santa Cams: High-speed digital cameras positioned around the globe capture “jet-fighter quality” footage of the reindeer.

• Fighter Jets: Canadian CF-18s and American F-15, F-16, and F-22 pilots often fly alongside the sleigh to provide a ceremonial escort into North American airspace.

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🎄 President Trump Joins the 2025 Mission

This year, the tradition received a high-profile boost from the Florida “Winter White House.” President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump joined the NORAD hotline from Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach.

Fielding calls from excited children, the President praised the holiday spirit and checked the radar status. During one call, the President memorably praised the gift of “clean, beautiful coal” and commended one young caller’s intelligence, referring to them as a “high-IQ person.”

The Trumps’ participation highlights the program’s massive scale, which now relies on over 1,500 volunteers to answer more than 100,000 phone calls on Christmas Eve alone.

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📊 NORAD Tracks Santa: By the Numbers

Metric	Impact
Annual Calls	100,000+
Website Visits	9 Million+ unique visitors
Volunteers	1,500+ military and civilian personnel
Languages	Tracking available in 8 languages
Tradition Age	70 Years (Founded 1955)

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