Dec 22 2006
Tracking Santa and little white envelopes
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For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa.
The tradition began after a Colorado Springs, Colorado based Sears Roebuck & Co. store advertisement for children to call Santa on a special "hotline" included an inadvertently misprinted telephone number. Instead of Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief’s operations "hotline."
The Director of Operations, Colonel Harry Shoup, received the first "Santa" call on Christmas Eve 1955. Realizing what had happened, Colonel Shoup had his staff check radar data to see if there was any indication of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Indeed there were signs of Santa and children who called were given an update on Santa’s position. Thus, the tradition was born.
NORAD carried out its first Santa tracking in 1958 after inheriting the tradition from CONAD. Since that time, Canadian and American men and women who work at NORAD have responded to phone calls from children personally. Last year the NORAD Santa tracking website was visited by millions of people who wanted to know Santa’s whereabouts.
Checking NORADSanta.org has become a family tradition for us. The kids love it, and each year they add more features to the sight including printables, puzzles, celebrity interviews, and facts about Santa.
A new tradition I’d like to introduce this year is the one of the small, white envelope. This has been going around the internet and you may have had it emailed to you. I learned about it in my women’s networking group, but it originally appeared in Woman’s Day magazine in the 12/14/82 issue.
I’m doing it to show the kids Christmas is about GIVING and not receiving. This year, Nathan and Lucie are obsessed with what they going to get, and have be oblivious to what they have given (basically nothing, since we do all their shopping for them).
I plan to list all the ways our family has given this year, from donating used toys and clothes, to volunteering, to giving money to causes we believe it.
What are your Christmas family traditions?
Technorati tags: traditions, Christmas, NORAD, Santa, white envelope
electric fireplace
I had never read the White Envelope story. It is beautiful and so touching. I think I will try and find a way to incorporate the idea this year.
We also check out the NORAD site every year. Actually we did it before the kids too!
Another tradition is, after the children’s mass on Christmas Eve, we head out for Chinese food and then drive around some local neighborhoods to view the Christmas lights.
Our family tradition is decorating the tree….we go over each ornament because they all have some sort of meaning or story behind them.