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"It was 1955, and Christmas was approaching, and Sears had a new idea for a yuletide gimmick. In local newspapers, the department store placed ads ... on behalf of Santa himself.\n\"HEY KIDDIES!\" the ad read, in a greeting that would seem creepy only in retrospect. \"Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time day or night.\"\nThe ads then listed local numbers for area children to call to get some one-on-one Kris Kringle time, which must have seemed, if you were a kid back then, pretty amazing. A direct line to St. Nick! Kids could finally bypass the middlemen that stood between between them and their gifts \u2014 the U.S. Postal Service, their parents \u2014 and go directly to the source. And even more directly, to that source's enormous bag of gifts. You can almost hear the Ralphie Parker voiceover.\nLike many innovations, though, Sears' frictionless Santa scheme found itself with an unforeseen problem. In the ad the company had placed in the local paper in Colorado Springs, Colo., Sears had listed Santa's number as ME 2-6681, which, according to Snopes, contained a typo: It was one digit off of the intended one. The number Sears had ended up printing and distributing to the city's citizens? The one for, as it happened, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) \u2014 the predecessor of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) \u2014 which, like Santa, specialized in aeronautics. And which, unlike Santa, was based in Colorado Springs.\nSuddenly, on Christmas Eve, phone calls intended for St. Nick were being received on a top-secret NORAD line \u2014 a line that was usually reserved for crises (which, back then, pretty much meant \"Russians attacking\"). When the first call came in, Col. Harry Shoup, the officer on duty at CONAD, picked up the phone. \n\"Yes, Sir, this is Col. Shoup.\"\nAs Mentalfloss explained, the colonel received no reply \u2014 just silence. \n\u201CSir? This is Col. Shoup,\u201D he said again.\nMore silence.\n\u201CSir?\" Shoup was probably, at this point, trying not to panic. Silence on the crisis line. \"Can you read me alright?\u201D\nFinally, the caller spoke up. It was not a commanding officer. It was ... a little girl. And she was confused, too. \"Are you really Santa Claus?\" she asked. \nShoup, at that point, demanded to know who was calling, Terri Van Keuren, his daughter, remembers. He was brusque. This didn't make any sense.\n\"The little voice is now crying,\" Van Keuren recalls.\nThe voice didn't give up, though. \"Is this one of Santa's elves, then?\" \nIt must be a prank, Shoup thought. But, as he scanned the room, the \"stony, serious faces\" of his fellow men suggested otherwise. Then it occurred to him: Lines must have, literally, gotten crossed. There must have been \"some screwup on the phones.\" \nAnd then Shoup made a fateful, delightful decision: He decided to play along. \n\u201CYes, I am,\u201D he answered the caller, be-elfing himself. \u201CHave you been a good little girl?\"\nMore calls began coming in. Shoup grabbed an airman who happened to be standing nearby, and told him to answer the calls, too. The direction Shoup gave, as Van Keuren remembers the story? \"Just pretend you're Santa.'\" \nSoon, the pretending evolved: The CONAD staff were providing the calling children not just with bowlful-of-jelly replies to their inquiries, but also with informational updates about Santa's progress as he made his way around the world. As NORAD's Santa site puts it: \"A tradition was born.\" \nThe tradition has evolved, slightly, since then. In 1958, when NORAD was formed, it continued to offer a \"Santa tracking\" service to anyone who called in \u2014 especially on Dec. 24. And the tracking continues. The people who answer the calls now include \"countless numbers of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps personnel,\" Van Keuren notes. As of 2009, those volunteers were handling more than 12,000 emails and more than 70,000 telephone calls from more than 200 countries and territories. In 2011, Michelle Obama answered calls on behalf of NORAD.\nThe geolocation tradition, today, also continues with the help of social media, dedicated apps (on iOS and Android) and in particular, the web \u2014 via noradsanta.org \u2014 which currently locates Santa, with the help of some complex satellite triangulation maneuvers, just where you'd expect him to be: at the North Pole. And which is, as far as I can tell, typo-free.\nYoni Appelbaum, Atlantic contributor and historian extraordinaire, has passed along some of his own fascinating research into the Santa-tracking story. First of all, he wrote in an email:\nIt turns out that the military, and other government agencies, had been using Santa to sell their missions long before 1954. At the height of the Second World War, Eisenhower\u2019s headquarters put out a release offering 'Christmas guidance' to war correspondents. It confirmed that 'a new North Pole Command has been formed,' that 'Santa Claus is directing operations,' and that 'he has under his command a small army of gnomes.' The censors, though, suppressed the location of Santa\u2019s headquarters, directed that his delivery methods be described only as employing 'secret devices' or 'special scientific techniques,' and proscribed 'any mention of radar or speculation on the purpose of reindeer antennae.'\nThat is both weird and delightful (army of gnomes! radar antennae!), and regardless, suggestive of the fact that CONAD had a vested interest in PR campaigns as well as military ones. It was primed, basically, to take advantage of the good cheer of Christmas for its own ends \u2014 among them, promoting its military technology. This makes sense, and would help explain why NORAD would have so faithfully continued the tradition year after year.\nYoni has also found, it's worth noting, disparities in the early stories that informed NORAD's, Snopes' and other current accounts of the intercepted North Pole calls. When Shoup told his story to the L.A. Times in 1980, he mentioned an unlisted line that a child had accessed. In a later newspaper story in 1999, Yoni notes, Shoup mentioned a much more limited, Red Phone-style line and multiple children. \nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\nImage: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/12/16/norad-santa-tracker/>