December 25, 2003


Tracking Santa on the Web

By Alison van Diggelen
Special to the Times

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house
Was a rumbling, a mumbling that Santa’s a louse!

“Santa’s not real!” says your 8-year-old sage
Well, what do you say in this Internet age?

Don’t tell him to listen, just ask him to sit
And watch the computer as you navigate it

Type noradsanta.org and soon you will find
A renewing of faith and a changing of mind

Your kids, they will sit there and glow with delight
As they watch dear old Santa fly through the night

From Glasgow to Moscow, from Bombay to Rome
They’ll see Santa speed by on route to your home

These guys in the mountain, so clever, so quick
They’ve got Santa covered from Shanghai to Brunswick

Ringo Starr is on board, to help out the crew
And watch the night sky over Britain, it’s true!

Ringo’s our hero for adding his cheer
He’s a great pal of Santa and all his reindeer

No longer will anyone grumble or grouse
Now that Santa’s as real as the click of their mouse

On the night before Christmas all parents must shout
“Three cheers to great NORAD! Good job, you’re far out!”

If your kids are anything like mine, you’ve already heard outbursts like this from my son, “Ian’s big brother says Santa’s a fake!” These blasphemous rumors going around grade school would break your heart. No such thing? How can the words spill out of kids too young to remember a world without the Web?

Like many inspired ideas, NORAD’s Santa Tracking started by accident. In 1955, a local store advertised a Santa Hotline inviting kids to call. However the phone number was mistyped. It connected kids instead to the Commander in Chief’s operations hotline. Colonel Harry Shoup took the first call from an excited child and thanks to his quick wit, said that they were checking radar data and could locate Santa’s route from the North Pole. A Christmas tradition was born and has continued every year to this day.

Almaden’s Alison van Diggelen is editor of siliconmom.com. She wrote this poem with the help of her 8-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter and welcomes comments at siliconmom@earthlink.net. Many thanks to Major Douglas Martin of NORAD for his generous contribution to this story.