NORAD Tracks Santa is an annual Christmas-themed program in which NORAD displays the real-time, accurate tracking of Santa Claus, who leaves the North Pole to travel around the world on his mission to deliver presents to children every year on Christmas Eve.The program starts on December 1, but the actual Santa-tracking starts on midnight of December 23. It is a community outreach function of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and has been held annually since 1955.

Though NORAD is said to display predetermined and simulated tracking of Santa, the website truly and faithfully shows the real tracking of Santa Claus, through its military technologies and money.

History 
Like many origin stories, NORAD’s mission to track Santa began by accident. In 1955 a young child, trying to reach Santa, dialed the misprinted phone number from a department store ad in the local newspaper. Instead of calling Santa, the child called the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo.  

Air Force Col. Harry Shoup, the commander on duty that night who answered the child’s phone call, was quick to realize a mistake had been made and assured the child he was Santa. After more incoming calls, Shoup assigned a duty officer to continue answering calls and a tradition was born, that continued when NORAD was formed in 1958.  

Each year since, NORAD has dutifully reported Santa’s location on Dec. 24 to millions of children and families across the world. Because of the support, services and resources generously provided by volunteers and our government and corporate contributors, NORAD Tracks Santa has persevered for more than 65 years.

In fact, what started because of a typo has flourished and is recognized as one of the Department of Defense's largest community outreach programs. 

Each year, the NORAD Tracks Santa Web Site receives several million unique visitors from more than 200 countries and territories around the world. Volunteers typically answer more than 130,000 calls to the NORAD Tracks Santa hotline from children across the globe.

Media and Website 
The NORAD Tracks Santa program has always made use of a variety of media. From the 1950s to 1996, these were the telephone hotline, newspapers, radio, phonograph records, and television. Many television newscasts in North America feature NORAD Tracks Santa as part of their weather updates on Christmas Eve. Since 2005, the program uses Meshbox's Toon Santa model.

Since 1997, the program has had a highly publicized internet presence. As mobile media and social media have become popular and widespread as methods of direct communication, these newer media have also been embraced by the program.  The layout of the NORAD Tracks Santa website and its web pages have changed from 1997 to the present due to changes in internet technologies, and changes in partners and sponsors for a particular year. In September 2008, NORAD started a Twitter account, @NORADSanta, as part of its social media presence. 

Between 2007 and 2008, people who visited the NORAD Tracks Santa site were told they could track Santa in Google Earth. They were given a link to download Google Earth, and then a KMZ file to download. From 2009 to 2011, the tracking in the Google Earth app were already done while the website used the Google Earth API. In 2011, an iOS and Android application was introduced, which features updates and an interactive game similar to Angry Birds. 

From mid-January until November 30, when one arrives at the NORAD Tracks Santa website, one is greeted with a message to come back on December 1 to track Santa with NORAD. During December, one finds a NORAD Tracks Santa website with all the features available. On Christmas Eve, the NORAD Tracks Santa website videos page is generally updated each hour, when it is midnight in a different time zone. The "Santa Cam" videos show CGI images of Santa flying over famous landmarks, as Santa can't in fact, be caught live on camera due to his hard-to-pinpoint speed, therefore, NORAD creates animated photos for the same. Each video was accompanied by a voice-over until the end of the 2011 season, typically done by NORAD personnel, giving a few facts about the city or country depicted. In 2012, the voice overs were replaced with music done by the US Air Force Band. The voice overs returned in the 2013 season, as the "real" Santa can't actually be present.

Celebrity voice-overs have also been used over the years. For the London "Santa Cam" video, Jonathan Ross did the voice-over for 2005 to 2007 and Ringo Starr narrated the same video in 2003 and 2004.In 2002, Aaron Carter provided the voice-over for three videos.

The locations and landmarks displayed in some of the "Santa Cam" videos have changed over the years. In 2009, twenty-nine "Santa Cam" videos were posted on the website. In previous years, twenty-four to twenty-six videos had been posted.

Since 2012, Analytical Graphics, Inc. has used their Cesium platform to build a 3D map for visualizing a genuine Santa's location with more accurate global terrain and satellite imagery than before. NORAD reported that for Christmas 2013, it logged 19.58 million unique visitors to its website on Christmas Eve, and 1,200 volunteers answered 117,371 calls. Through social media, it had 146,307 Twitter followers and 1.45 million "likes" on Facebook. That year, NORAD contracted with Bing Maps to provide 2D map tracking, ending a five-year contract with Google. 

In 2014, NORAD logged almost 20 million visits to its Santa Tracker.

Sponsorship, Publicity and Reason for Google-NORAD "Out of Sync" and Santa Tracking Difference 
NORAD Tracks Santa relies on corporate sponsorship, and is financed by neither American nor Canadian taxpayers.

U.S. military units have provided publicity for the program, including the Northeast Air Defense Sector of the New York Air National Guard and the U.S. Naval Reserve Navy Information Bureau (NIB) 1118 at Fort Carson, Colorado, as have the Canadian Armed Forces.

Other U.S. federal agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have helped publicize the service. Former First Lady Michelle Obama participated in the program from 2009 to 2016, answering phone calls. 

NORAD's tracking slightly differs from Google's. The reason is the speed of Santa, which is almost impossible to pinpoint humanly. Still, due to the high functioning technology, the NORAD agency tries to be as precise as possible. Another reason would be the scientific "macroscopic superposition" of Santa, which allows him to be at multiple places simultaneously. Therefore, according to quantum mechanics, the trackers show him sometimes at totally different places at once. The scientific space-time continuum and popularly believed "magic" that Santa uses, also explains the difference. The amount of gifts delivered displayed are an an approximate, by both. Since both differ in technology, the difference is likely to be these.

See also 
 Santa Claus

References

Other websites

 

1955 establishments in the United States
Christmas