Washington:
The Joint U.S.-Canadian Military Observatory has continued its decades-long Christmas tradition of tracking Santa's whereabouts and helping children around the world discover when his reindeer-powered, gift-filled sleigh comes to town.
A 3D interactive website at www.noradsanta.org showed Santa and his reindeer on their imaginary global delivery route, allowing users to click and learn about the different cities along the way.
Presented by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the Santa tracker dates back to 1955, when a Colorado newspaper ad printed a phone number to connect children to Santa Claus but incorrectly directed them to the agency's hotline. military nerve center.
To avoid disappointing the little ones, then-director of NORAD, Colonel Harry Shoup, instructed his staff to check the radar to see where Old Saint Nick might be and notify the children of its location.
Sixty-eight years later, NORAD continues the tradition of setting up a temporary call center from its headquarters in Colorado to answer children's burning questions.
A photo the group posted on Facebook showed lines of people answering phones, some in uniforms and others in red Santa hats.
Some American dignitaries – namely President Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden – took part in the holiday promotion.
“Tonight, the President and First Lady participated in the North American Aerospace Defense Command Santa, which monitored conversations with children and families across the country,” the White House said in a statement.
Earlier Sunday, the tracker was briefly out of service, leaving children in the Pacific region in the dark about its exact position.
“Hey #SantaTrackers! We may be having a few technical issues with our tracking map, but #Santa is still flying! He's going to Fiji next!” the group running the tracker said on their Facebook page, before announcing a fix an hour later.
Santa had started his journey with an extraordinary first stop, according to NORAD: the International Space Station orbiting Earth.
The reindeer-drawn sleigh was also seen passing through Israel, as well as through southern Gaza, through Africa, and venturing south to Palmer Station, a research facility in Antarctica.
Santa Claus then passed through South America on his way to the United States, where he unloaded around 100,000 gifts every second, for a total of around 4.9 billion presents as of 01:30 GMT on Monday, according to the tracker.
When NORAD isn't spreading holiday cheer, it's conducting aerospace monitoring and warning operations – including monitoring missile launches from North Korea, something Santa will be thinking about this year when he passes over, with the latest ICBM test just a few days ago.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)