Like every year, Santa Claus will begin his grand tour on the night of December 24 to deliver his gifts to children around the world. Do you want to know where it is? NORAD is here to help (and keep your kids entertained).
The year 2021 may have been difficult because of the coronavirus, but that’s no reason not to take advantage of the magic of Christmas to change your mind a little, and those of your children, if you have any. . If you’ve already played the advent calendar card, you can try to entertain them with the NORAD tool to follow Santa’s journey on the night of December 24 to 25, and make them wait before opening. gifts.
You should know that NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been offering a service to track its sled for sixty-five years. Indeed, it is not because we were created in a context of cold war and that the nuclear apocalypse could occur at any moment between the USA and the USSR that we did not keep elsewhere. a festive soul.
Follow Santa’s journey with NORAD here.
A decades-old tradition
This tradition, which has adapted to the evolution of tech, would come from the idea of a man, Colonel Harry Shoup. While on duty on December 24, he reportedly asked his staff to brief Santa Claus’s supposed location to any children who called the number of NORAD’s ancestor, CONAD. It would have been printed by mistake on a flyer giving the alleged number of Santa Claus.
This origin is however partly uncertain and more or less different versions of the story compete with it. It is, however, established that, as early as 1948, the US Air Force issued a statement claiming that a forward radar station in the north detected ” an unidentified sled, propelled by eight reindeer Several kilometers above sea level, and heading south.
Today, the tradition of making calls to NORAD has remained, despite the crucial nature of its other missions and the particular context in which it has to work – Covid-19 requires. However, the follow-up of Santa Claus can also be done by email or online, thanks to a dedicated site which is notably available in French. Of course, the race follow-up will only take place on December 24, but the site offers various activities.
If you are more of a mobile application, NORAD has even designed (for a few years now) dedicated software, one for Android, the other for iOS. The concept is the same: Tracking kicks off December 24, but you can kill time and keep your toddlers busy with the mini-games (there’s one offered per day, like an advent calendar), videos, music and stories.
And if your child is passionate about military matters, or yourself for that matter, know that the site takes the opportunity to present NORAD missions. A chance, moreover, that the operators of the North American Aerospace Defense Command are using sufficiently powerful radars to know that it is Santa Claus who is approaching and not an enemy missile that should be shot down. .
The year 2021 has been difficult enough that we do not kill Santa Claus on top of that.