Tracking Santa online: 5 things to know

PETERSON AIR FORCE BASE, COLORADE: For kids who can't wait for Santa to arrive, the North American Aerospace Defense Command has a Christmas treat. Visions of sugar plums can be augmented by a check on the fabled fat man's progress around the globe on Christmas Eve.

Here are five things to know about the holiday tradition called Norad Tracks Santa:

How do you follow Santa's path?
Norad provides updates by phone, Facebook, Twitter and email. Smartphone apps also are available at app stores.

Norad's Santa operations center opened at 6am EST on December 24 and has received tens of thousands of calls from around the world. This year, Santa's first stop after leaving the North Pole was Novoye Chaplino, Russia, Norad said. The Canadian naval ship Regina reported seeing Santa on its radar near the Arabian Sea.

Santa usually ends his trip in North America and South America. "Santa calls the shots," Norad says on its website. "We just track him!"

How many people follow Santa?
As of 10pm MST on Christmas Eve, volunteers answered 1,01,300 calls, officials said. The website had 50.6 million page views and 13.6 million site visits as of the same time.

Last year, volunteers answered 1,14,000 phone calls from around the world. The website had 22.3 million unique visitors. Norad Tracks Santa has 1.2 million followers on Facebook and 1,29,000 on Twitter.

Among the questions kids have had on their minds when they called in previous years:

* "Am I on the nice list or the naughty list?" * "Can you put my brother on the naughty list?" * "Are you an elf?" * "How much to adopt one of Santa's reindeer?"

Why does Norad do it?
In 1955, a local newspaper advertisement invited children to call Santa but mistakenly listed the hotline of Norad's predecessor. Rather than disappoint the kids, commanders told them they indeed knew where Santa was. Noard, a US-Canadian operation based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, continues the tradition every Christmas Eve.

Why was there a controversy this year?
A children's advocacy group complained that an animated video on the Norad Tracks Santa website injected militarism into Christmas by showing fighter jets escorting Santa's sleigh on a 39-second video promoting the event. Norad says the fighter escort is nothing new. Norad began depicting jets accompanying Santa and his reindeer in the 1960s.

How does Norad track Santa?
Using the same satellites it uses to track missiles, Norad says it is able to detect heat signatures from Rudolph's nose.

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