Friday 12/24/21 Christmas Eve
Celebrate National Last Minute Shoppers and National Egg Nog Day.
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Don't forget to follow Santa as he delivers presents all around the world with Norad Santa. It is a community outreach function of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and has been held annually since 1955.
On December 24, 1948, the United States Air Force issued a communique claiming that an "early warning radar net to the north" had detected "one unidentified sleigh, powered by eight reindeer, at 14,000 feet [4,300 meters], heading 180 degrees." The Associated Press passed this "report" along to the general public. It was the first time that the United States Armed Forces issued a statement about tracking Santa Claus' sleigh on Christmas Eve, though it was a one-time event, not repeated over the next several years.
The program originated before the actual formation of NORAD, as an annual event on December 24, 1955. According to legend, a Sears department store placed an advertisement in the Colorado Springs newspaper The Gazette, which told children they could place a call to Santa Claus and included the number ME 2-6681.[7] A call allegedly came through to Colorado Springs' Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) Center as one digit was misprinted.
In some versions of the story, the calls were coming in to the "red telephone" hotline that connected CONAD directly to command authorities at the Strategic Air Command. Colonel Harry Shoup, who was a Crew Commander on duty, answered the first call and supposedly told his staff to give all children who called in later a made-up "current location" for Santa Claus.
Shoup responded gruffly to the child and no additional Santa Claus-related calls came in to CONAD. A more accurate description of the events of 1955 appears to be that on November 30, a child trying to reach Santa on a hotline number provided in a Sears advertisement misdialled the number and instead reached Shoup at his desk at CONAD.
However, when a member of Shoup's staff placed a picture of Santa on a board used to track unidentified aircraft that December, Shoup saw a public relations opportunity for CONAD and he asked CONAD's public affairs officer Colonel Barney Oldfield to inform the press that CONAD was tracking Santa's sleigh. In his release to the press, Oldfield added that "CONAD, Army, Navy, and Marine Air Forces will continue to track and guard Santa and his sleigh on his trip to and from the U.S. against possible attack from those who do not believe in Christmas."
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