Letters from an American - December 23, 2025

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

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December 23, 2025. On December 24th, 2025, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, will celebrate 70 years of tracking Santa sleigh. According to legend, the tradition of tracking Santa sleigh began in November, 1955, when a child trying to reach Santa on a telephone hotline advertised by a Sears Roebuck and company store in Colorado, transposed two digits. It was not Santa who picked up the phone, but Colonel Harry Schaup of Continental Air Defense Command, known as Conad, located in Colorado Springs. Schaup was brusk when a small voice asked if he was Santa, but he later recognized that interest in Santa could be an opportunity to call public attention to the air defense system,

that would shield the U.S. if Soviet bombers were able to reach the country from over the North Pole. After World War II, many Americans were hoping to turn away from world affairs, but U.S. and Canadian leaders worried that North America was vulnerable to an attack from the USSR over the polar region. That wasn't on many Americans' radar screens. A few weeks after the young child's call, Schaup told his public relations office, to inform the newswire services that Conad was tracking Santa's sleigh as it traveled from his home at the North Pole. Reporters loved the story and the following year they called to see if the trackers would be operational again. In 1957, Canada and the U.S. formed the North American Air Defense Command, or NORAD.

By charting Santa's ride, the agency illustrated the military's mission to protect the citizens of the continent by tracking an object traveling from the North Pole over the Arctic Ocean to Canada and beyond. By Christmas Eve 1960, Norad was posting updates and tracking the flight of S-Claas. It reported that the sleigh had made an emergency landing on the ice of Hudson Bay. When Canadian fighter jets stopped by to check on the incident, they found Santa tending to a reindeer's injured foot. Once the animal was bandaged, the jets escorted Santa's sleigh as he completed his annual flight. Since then, fighter jets have frequently intercepted the sleigh to salute Santa, who reigns in his team to let the slower jets catch up. Over time, NORAD became the North

American Aerospace Defense Command, and its mission expanded to include collecting information about the Earth's atmosphere, coastal waters, and intelligence. It is still key to U.S. and Canadian defense. And what began in 1955 as a way to familiarize war-weary Americans with Cold War-era defense systems has become an operation in which more than a thousand Canadian and American military personnel, Defense Department civilian workers, and local participants near Colorado Springs, NORAD is headquartered, volunteer to answer the more than 100,000 phone calls that come from children around the world on Christmas Eve. It is a testament to the long-standing U.S.-Canadian friendship. For one night a year, the hard-edged world of international alliances, intelligence,

radar, satellites, and fighter jets turns into a night for adults, to create a magical world for children. Letters from an American was written and read by Heather Cox Richardson. It was produced at Soundscape Productions, Dead in Massachusetts, recorded with music composed by Michael Moss. Thank you.