"How the character and traditions of Santa Claus evolved over centuries"

by Stephanie Sy and Mary Fecteau

[This bit of American Christmas lore aired on PBS News Hour on Christmas Day, 25 December 2025.  I’ve occasionally posted some sort of seasonal offering on or near holidays, such as Christmas or Hanukkah, even one on Valentine’s Day, so here’s a conversation about how Santa Claus came to be the “jolly old elf” we traditionally see in the U.S. whenever he’s mentioned or seen (say, around a mall or department store at this time of year).

[Speaking of Santa, earlier this year—I was late for Yuletide ’24—I posted a piece on NORAD Tracks Santa, the defense alliance’s official Santa site, called “Here Comes Santa Claus” (3 January 2025).  Other Christmas-related posts have been “‘Is There a Santa Claus?’” (25 December 2009), “‘It's a Wonderful Life Was Based on a “Christmas Card” Short Story by Philip Van Doren Stern’” by Daven Hiskey (26 December 2016), and “Spirit of 1907 Christmas, Recovered in 1999, Completed in 2016” (21 December 2022).  I even did a Hanukkah post last year, “Dreidel” (6 January 2024); the holiday in 2023 was 7-15 December, so I was a little late with the post.]

William Brangham [substitute anchor for the “PBS News Hour”]: So, for this next story, we need to warn you. If you have small kids in the room, you may want to mute this and come back a bit later, because we’re talking about that visitor from the North Pole, OK?

This Christmas Day, many good boys and girls welcomed that familiar visitor last night, the jolly man in the red suit with a sleigh full of gifts. But that white bearded figure that we all recognize as Santa Claus, he is a relatively modern creation shaped over centuries.

Stephanie Sy recently talked with an author who unwraps the surprising history of Old Saint Nick.

Stephanie Sy: That author is Gerry Bowler.

And his book “Santa Claus: A Biography” [McClelland & Stewart, 2005] traces how the legend of our favorite bearded gift-giver evolved over centuries.

[Gerry (G. Q.) Bowler (b. 1948) is a Canadian historian whose research focuses on the intersection of religion and popular culture, especially Christmas. He has taught at a number of universities in western Canada and spent 25 years with the University of Manitoba as a Professor of History.]

Gerry, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the “News Hour.”

So I want to hop right into it.

Is Santa Claus – and – I quote from the book – a figure of mythology or a creature of literature or a tool of a clever capitalist?

Gerry Bowler, Author, “Santa Claus: A Biography”: He is a wonderful myth, about 1,700 years old, American in renovation and largely a conspiracy by families.

So it changes over time.

Stephanie Sy: Saint Nicholas was an actual fourth-century bishop [traditionally 15 March 270-6 December 343, Anatolia (modern-day Turkey)]. What was he most known for?

Gerry Bowler: At the time of his life, he was known for generosity.

But when he died, a cult grew up around him inside Christianity that made him the most influential, popular male saint on the Christian calendar. He was the patron saint of so many things, but probably his most famous miracle in the Middle Ages was his resurrection of three murdered boys who had been chopped up and put in a pickle barrel.

He discovered this and put them all together again. So he becomes the patron saint of children. And thus around maybe the 12th century, he was someone who parents and the church said came on December 6 [his feast day] to bring presents for good little girls and boys to leave something in their shoe.

[The tradition of leaving something in children’s shoes in celebration of St. Nicholas (on 6 December, St, Nicholas Day, or its eve, the night of the 5th) stems from legends associated with the historical figure Saint Nicholas of Myra. In the most famous story, St. Nicholas tossed bags of gold coins through an open window or down the chimney of the house of a poor man with three daughters but no dowry for them.  One bag landed inside a stocking or shoe left by the fireplace to dry.

[These acts of secret generosity formed the basis of the tradition of children in many cultures, particularly in Europe, leaving their shoes or stockings out on the eve of St. Nicholas Day. Adoption of the tradition spread among the German, Polish, Belgian, and Dutch communities throughout the United States. Americans who celebrate St. Nicholas Day generally also celebrate Christmas Day as a separate holiday and some of the traditions and rituals of St. Nicholas Day, such as leaving out a stocking to be filled, have become traditions of Christmas here.]

Stephanie Sy: So, Gerry, it sounds like there’s this darker side of the Santa Claus legend to talk about here that a lot of people are unaware of.

Gerry Bowler: Well, in the 1500s, when Protestants abolished the cult of saints, parents had to have some kind of magical gift-bringer. They still wanted that aspect.

In many places, they turned to the Christ child. In French, you call it Le petit Jésus. In German, it’d be Das Christkindl. The Christ child is certainly a great Christian symbol, but he lacked two things that Saint Nicholas had had. One, the baby is obviously not going to carry a big sack. And, two, he’s not scary.

And Saint Nicholas could scare kids into good behavior. So what happened in Germany and in the Northern Europe was that the Christ child started becoming accompanied by scary helpers. They carried a whip or switches or a chain.

In Austria, of course, we have Krampus, which looks exactly like the devil. So he’s one of those scary helpers.

Stephanie Sy: So this goes back to your first answer, which is there was this conspiracy of families. Are they basically at the root of the Santa Claus that we know today?

Gerry Bowler: Well, a number of New York poets and thinkers and rich landowners wanted to make Saint Nicholas the bearer of good things and also a bit of a threat to bad kids.

The first poem that takes Saint Nicholas out of his Catholic bishop’s uniform and puts him in a fur-trimmed red robe is called “A Children’s Friend” in the 1820s. It’s a poem that describes this Christmas Eve midnight gift-bringer who comes equipped with a reindeer-powered sleigh.

[A Children’s Friend (whose full title is The Children’s Friend: A New-Year's Present, to the Little Ones from Five to Twelve) is an 1821 booklet published in New York City by William B. Gilley, a well-known bookseller and a neighbor of Clement Clarke Moore (see below).

[The poem, called by its first line, “Old Santeclaus with Much Delight,” which has been adopted as its title, was published anonymously. While some have historically attributed it to Clement Clarke Moore, modern scholars often credit the publisher William B. Gilley (ca. 1785-1830) or the illustrator Arthur J. Stansbury (1781-1865) with its authorship.

[A Children’s Friend was intended to be a small series of children’s booklets published by Gilley in the early 1820s, offering moral lessons and engaging stories to foster positive behavior. (“Old Santeclaus with Much Delight” was Number III in the series. The title of Number I was “Infant Thoughts,” intended as a moral and educational tool for young children. The titles or themes for Number II are not well-documented.) The series was intended to be ongoing; however, there’s no evidence the series extended significantly beyond the initial installments.

[The original is a small, 6-inch paperback containing eight hand-colored lithographic engravings (considered the first in a book in America). It sold for 25 cents for colored copies and 18¾ cents for plain ones ($7.10 and $5.40 in 2025, respectively).

The next year [1823], Clement Clarke Moore [1779-1863; resident of Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood] takes that sleigh, multiplies the reindeer, and writes a poem for his family.

Stephanie Sy: And the poem you’re referring to there is “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.”

Gerry Bowler: “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” a “Visit from St. Nicholas.” And it goes viral, as it were.

[The poem’s formal title is “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (actually, “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas”), but it’s more commonly known by its first line: “’Twas the Night Before Christmas.” The poem was first published anonymously in the Troy, New York Sentinel on 23 December 1823, having been sent to the paper by a friend of Moore.]

It’s adopted by families first in the Northeastern United States. Then it spreads to Canada and throughout the rest of America.

Stephanie Sy: So, in other words, there’s sort of this amalgamation of traditions that are folded in and layered on.

Gerry Bowler: That’s the nature of Christmas. Christmas is very adaptive. By 1900, Santa is pretty much set, though, except with the addition of Rudolph in 1939.

(SINGING [“Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” the 1949 song written by Johnny Marks (1909-85) and first recorded by Gene Autry (1907-98), based on the 1939 story Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer published by the Montgomery Ward Company.])

Gerry Bowler: And despite all kinds of efforts by Hollywood and commerce to make him in their image, he’s remained pretty stable since then.

Stephanie Sy: Why do you think the legend of Santa Claus has endured for centuries?

Gerry Bowler: Because it is so valuable to families.

Saint Nicholas is this embodiment of generosity, of unmerited favor, to which you add a fantasy, a midnight gift-bringer from some place enormously exotic, powered by reindeer, for crying out loud. It serves to give kids an idea of fantasy, of generosity.

So, as long as families continue to love Santa Claus, it doesn’t matter what Wall Street or any particular denomination happens to be for or against him.

Stephanie Sy: That is Gerry Bowler, the author of “Santa Claus: A Biography.”

Thank you so much for joining us. Happy holidays.

Gerry Bowler: My pleasure, and merry Christmas.

In the 1860s, renowned political cartoonist Thomas Nast [1840-1902] created the distinctly American image of Santa Claus we recognize today: a jolly, plump, grandfatherly figure.

[Thomas Nast’s first depiction of Santa Claus was an illustration titled "Santa Claus in Camp," published on the cover of the 3 January 1863 issue of Harper’s Weekly. This initial rendition, from the middle of the Civil War, differed significantly from the modern, non-partisan figure he later became.

[Santa was depicted as a staunch Union supporter during the American Civil War. He is shown sitting in a sleigh distributing gifts—such as warm clothing and Bibles—to Union soldiers in a military camp. Instead of his now-standard red suit, Santa wore a jacket patterned with white stars and trousers with stripes, mimicking the American flag. Santa is shown holding a “jumping jack” toy that is a caricature of Confederate President Jefferson Davis with a noose around his neck. (Nast was a Republican, the party led by Union President Abraham Lincoln.)

[Influenced by his German heritage (Nast was born in Germany) and Clement Clarke Moore’s poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” Nast drew Santa as a small, plump, elflike figure with a full white beard.

[While this was his first direct depiction, Nast also included a secondary illustration in the same issue titled “A Christmas Furlough,” which featured a smaller Santa delivering presents through a chimney in the background of a domestic scene.]

[Stephanie Sy is a PBS News Hour correspondent and serves as anchor of PBS News Hour West.  Throughout her career, she served in anchor and correspondent capacities for ABC News, Al Jazeera America, CBSN, CNN International, and PBS News Hour Weekend.  Prior to joining News Hour, she was with Yahoo News where she anchored coverage of the 2018 Midterm Elections and reported from Donald Trump’s victory party on Election Day 2016.

[Mary Fecteau is an Emmy Award-winning Producer at PBS NewsHour. Her work has aired nationally on PBS.

[I’m not Christian, so Christmas has no significance to me as a religious holiday.  I do share in the cultural festivities—we had a tree in our home and we exchanged gifts—but in my family the significance of 25 December is that it’s my birthday.  Last Thursday was my 79th.

[Over the years, I’ve spent Christmas in some far-off places.  I’m not even counting the places where I was living when 25 December came around—Washington, D.C.; Koblenz, Germany; Berlin; New York City.  On this continent, I’ve marked the holiday in Chicago; New Orleans; Williamsburg, Virginia (for an 18th-century celebration); Mexico City; and Quebec City.

[On the way to New Hope, Pennsylvania, in 1985, my parents and I stopped to watch Washington Crossing the Delaware at Washington Crossing.  In 1976, I had performed the role of Hessian Colonel Johann Rall, the mercenary defender of Trenton who was defeated by Washington’s Continentals on Christmas night 1776, in William Mastrosimone’s Devil Take the Hindmost (see my post “Johann Rall: A Historical Portrait,” 10 and 15 December 2009).  The play was presented in the bicentennial year; the historical reenactment we saw was staged on the 209th anniversary of the crossing.

[Abroad, I saw Christmas in Paris on my 16th birthday in 1962 and London the next year.  Zermatt, Switzerland, home of the Matterhorn, was the site of three holidays after that, and one in Gstaad.  Zermatt’s on the side of a mountain and climbs up the slope toward the ski areas.  You get there by a special, small-gauge rail line and one stop up the mountain is a village called St. Niklaus.  Of course, we called it “Santa Claus Town.”  At night, the village of Zermatt looks like a giant Christmas tree because of the lit-up chalets and hotels climbing up the mountainside.

[I observed one memorable holiday at the 700-year-old home of a family of friends in the tiny French town of Villefranche-de-Lauragais in 1971.  On Christmas morning, I cooked French toast for my hosts, which was a great astonishment for the Humiliens on two counts: first, the idea that I would (or, I suppose, could) cook for them was a surprise; second . . . well, French toast isn’t French!  They’d never heard of such a thing.  They were so thrilled, they talked about this event for years to come.   

[I was in Shanghai on Christmas 1980, followed by Cairo in 1982.  Christmas, of course, isn’t a holiday in China, but they mark it for us tourists.  Christmas Eve dinner was a special banquet at a hotel in Shanghai.  Marvelous and exquisite! Shanghai, because of its history as a European enclave, is proud of its reputation for European cuisine.  I still have the menu from this Christmas Eve meal (see “Travel Journal: People's Republic of China, 1980 – Part 2” [27 December 2021]).

[In Cairo on 25 December, also not a holiday in Egypt, we went to Giza to see the sound and light show at the pyramids.  Now, I’m not a big fan of sound and light shows; I find them hokey and enervating.  The most interesting thing about the performance at Giza was that it was the same show that Roger Moore’s James Bond was at in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me—when he first encounters Jaws (see “Travel Journal: Israel & Egypt, 1982 – Part 9” [11 August 2021]). 

Here Comes Santa Claus

 

[On 24 December, I watched PBS News Hour with a segment called “On Christmas Eve, a special look at the origins of NORAD’s Santa tracker.”  It was a story narrated by three children of one of the commanders in charge of an early warning radar system of NORAD.  They recalled a surprising phone call their dad received one night in November. 

[Figuring that many people hadn’t heard the story, I thought it would make a good entry for Rick On Theater at Christmastime.  I’d have liked to post it on the 23rd, the slot on ROT closest to Christmas Day, but that date had passed and I’d already started a three-part series (“Go-won-go Mohawk (1859-1924),” 23, 26, and 29 December).  So I’m posting it now, a little late for Christmas 2024 . . . but think of it as a little early for next Christmas.]

Depending on where you come from, what country or national origin, if you believe in Santa Claus or Father Christmas, or just like the legend, you think the Jolly Old Elf lives in various places.  Most Americans say he lives at the North Pole, and people in a large number of other countries and cultures—those that say Santa is the Christmastime gift-bringer—agree. 

This story is for those of us who say Santa lives at the North Pole, mostly for residents of Canada and the United States.  That’s because it’s about NORAD’s Santa-tracker, which traces his route from the North Pole all around the world delivering presents to the boys and girls on his Nice List.  Brief updates are televised all Christmas Eve and there are websites, including NORAD’s own, that show the progress of Santa’s sleigh along its whole trip.

NORAD, of course, is the North American Aerospace Defense Command, established binationally by Canada and the United States in 1958 and headquartered at Peterson Space Force Base (renamed from Peterson Air Force Base in 2021) near Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Its principal mission is to provide aerospace and maritime warning, air sovereignty, and protection for Canada and the Continental United States. 

(From 1954 to 1958, NORAD’s predecessor was the Continental Air Defense Command, or CONAD, a solely U.S. operation.  Until March 1981, NORAD was known as the North American Air Defense Command.)

But in 1955, something happened that gave CONAD and then NORAD a new kind of supplemental purpose.

On the night of 30 November that year—a wire story datelined the next day confirms the date—while Air Force Colonel Harry W. Shoup (1917-2009), operations commander at CONAD, was on duty in the Combat Alert Center at Ent Air Force Base, one of the telephones on his desk rang. 

“I remember two phones on his desk,” said Terri Van Keuren, then 65 and one of Shoup’s three daughters, on a 2014 StoryCorps broadcast on National Public Radio (which was also the text of the News Hour segment).  “One was this red phone.  Only a four-star general at the Pentagon and my dad had the number.”

“This is a top secret line,” explained a curator of the Canada Aviation and Space Museum, on a 2023 CBC News broadcast, a division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.  “So when it rings, that [normally] means bad news.”

“This was the fifties, this was the Cold War,” pointed out Shoup’s son, Richard, 59 at the time of the StoryCorps recording.  Tensions with the USSR were heightening, along with fears of nuclear war, so everyone figured a call to the hotline could mean an imminent Soviet attack.

When the emergency-only “red phone” rang on that day a little over 69 years ago, all eyes at the operations center turned to Colonel Shoup, said the curator at the Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa.

As Pamela Farrell, then 70 and another of Shoup’s daughters, recollects the tale, her dad picked up the receiver and said, “This is Colonel Shoup.”  And then there was a childish voice that asked, “Is this Santa Claus?”

At first, his children recalled, Shoup thought the call was a prank and he confronted the child, a young boy, more gruffly than he later reported.  According to the Associated Press, an International News Service story from 1 December 1955 published in the Pasadena [California] Independent reported that the boy asked if there was a Santa Claus at the North Pole, Shoup answered much the way one might expect from a military officer with the responsibility for ordering a strike that could end life on Earth.

“There may be a guy called Santa Claus at the North Pole,” Colonel Shoup barked, “but he’s not the one I worry about coming from that direction.”  

The child could be heard bursting into tears.  Shoup quickly switched gears and bellowed “Ho, Ho, Ho!” taking on the role of jolly old Saint Nick.  The boy paused, then said, “Hey, you’re not Santa,” Shoup told the AP in 1999.

Realizing that the call wasn’t a put-on or a hoax, Shoup went on: “Yes, I am Santa Claus.  Have you been a good boy?”  Then he spoke to his mother. 

She told him that Sears, Roebuck and Co. had run an ad in the Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph listing a hotline kids could call to talk to Santa Claus.  But the ad contained a typo in the hotline number, and the kids who called in reached CONAD’s hotline instead.  

The ad, which featured a photorealistic drawing of Santa, read:

HEY, KIDDIES!

Call me on my private phone and I will talk to you personally any time day or night....

Santa Claus

In some versions of the story, the child who called Shoup was a girl, not a boy, but in the account Shoup told the AP in ’99, he hung up the phone after speaking to the boy and his mother, and shortly there was another call from a young girl who read her Christmas list.   

After that, recalled Shoup, fifty calls a day for Santa came into the ops center.  Shoup’s daughter Patricia Farrell said her father “put a couple of airmen on the phones to act like Santa Claus.”  Her sister, Terri Van Keuren, remembered that when her “very straight-laced, very disciplined” father did that, the airmen thought, “The old man’s really flipped his lid this time.  We’re answering Santa calls,” and it became a matter of humor in the center.

In the days before computers and GPS, CONAD used a large, plexiglass map of North America to plot unidentified objects.  On the morning of Christmas Eve (the day before my ninth birthday), an ops center staffer playfully drew Santa and his sleigh and reindeer over the North Pole on the map.

When Shoup came in and saw the grease-pencil sketch, a lieutenant colonel offered to take it down.  Van Keuren reported that her father contemplated at the map for a while and then responded, “You leave it right there.”  He first called the CONAD Public Affairs Office and then a local radio station and said, “This is the commander at the Combat Alert Center and we have an unidentified flying object.”  He added with a laugh, “Why, it looks like a sleigh.”

Through the CONAD PAO and the wire services, Shoup put out the word:

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.

Instead of getting the Sears ad pulled, according to Snopes, a website that fact-checks and investigates urban legends, hoaxes, and folklore, Colonel Shoup decided to offer the boys and girls information about Santa’s movement en route from the North Pole.

On that first Christmas of CONAD/NORAD’s tracking of Santa Claus, the Associated Press syndicated a report on his journey, datelined 23 December 1955 from Colorado Springs (posted on Gizmodo, a design, technology, science, and science fiction blog):

Colorado Springs, Colo., Dec 23 (AP) — Santa Claus Friday [the 23rd] was assured safe passage into the United States by the Continental Air Defense Combat Operations Center here which began plotting his journey from the North Pole early Friday morning.

CONAD said first reports of its radar and ground observer outposts indicate Santa was traveling about 45 knots at an altitude of 35,000 feet and should arrive in the United States early Saturday night for his annual visit.

. . . .

And Santa’s track, being plotted here on the main surveillance board, is a very wide one, indicating that his sleigh is heavily loaded with toys and goodies.

As NORAD Tracks Santa, the Command’s official Santa site, puts it: “. . . and a tradition was born.” 

Although, it really wasn’t quite yet.  Shoup hadn’t planned on repeating the event the next year.  He figured it was a one-off and Christmas 1956 would be run-of-the-mill.  In the fall, however, the Public Affairs Officer told him that both the Associated Press and United Press International were waiting to hear that CONAD would remount the Santa-tracking.  

Since CONAD wanted to raise its public profile—and what better way than (as Gizmodo’s Matt Novak put it) to let U.S. parents respond to their kids who ask what CONAD (and now NORAD) is that “those are the people who help Santa” rather than, “those are the people who are ensuring our second strike [sic] capabilities after you and everyone in your play group are turned to dust by a nuclear attack.”

So, the PAO convinced Colonel Shoup, and he acquiesced.

Then a tradition was launched.  It continued when NORAD was formed in 1958 and took over the special Christmas Eve mission from CONAD and in 1981, when the North American Air Defense Command became the North American Aerospace Defense Command. 

Well, that’s the story as Colonel Shoup, his family, and NORAD’s PAO usually tell it.  More or less, anyway.

Over the years, Shoup embellished the tale and edited it a little.  Other details may have been fudged from the start.  Certainly, the Shoup children, who gave us the narrative aired by NPR in 2014 and that PBS used for its 2024 segment last month, weren’t in the ops center when it all went down—unauthorized personnel, not even the CO’s kids, would have been allowed in the room.  Besides, they’d have only been 6, 11, and 16 at the time.

Gizmodo declares that the flawed origin story of NORAD’s Santa-tracker is “morphing and warping with each new re-telling.”  Just google “NORAD Tracks Santa” and read just a few of the accounts and you’ll see that the blog is right.

(Incidentally, NORAD used to work with Google in the middle of the 2000s, but they split.  Now Google launched a competing Santa-tracker in December 2004 called . . . well, Google Santa Tracker.)

The main details are confirmed: there was a phone call from a child, the cartoon on the plexiglass map was real, and Shoup did start the Santa-tracking program, with the support of CONAD’s PAO and the commanding general, who saw an opportunity to raise unit morale and gain a publicity boost at the same time.

And let’s give credit where credit is due.  Yoni Appelbaum of The Atlantic observed that Shoup, “had a flair for public relations” (“Yes, Virginia, There Is a NORAD,” 21 Dec. 2015).  He’d displayed his acumen before on a number of occasions, Appelbaum reported—and been commended on it.  In the New York Times, presidential historian Michael Beschloss labeled Shoup “a media pro” (“How Santa Claus Ended Up on Norad’s Radar,” 20 Dec. 2015, “Sunday Business”: 5).

But in the telling of the Santa-call caper, sometimes the caller was a boy and sometimes it was a girl.  (I also mention in passing above that Shoup changed his explanation of how he greeted that first caller.  At first he seemed to acknowledge that he addressed the child sharply, but later his recollection was that he was immediately receptive to the kid’s story.)  Regardless of gender, what the caller said changes somewhat depending on who’s telling the story—or when. 

So does when the event took place—because it didn’t happen on Christmas Eve, as so many of the latter-day retellings would have it.  The wire story that the Pasadena Independent published on 1 December 1955 (and was reported by Gizmodo) proves that Shoup’s call came in on 30 November—3½ weeks earlier.

And speaking of that telephone call: there are a couple of things about that, too.  First, it’s uncertain whether the Sears ad printed the wrong number by accident, or the caller misdialed one digit.  Both versions circulate even today.  Apparently, no one’s sure.  Even Shoup had told both cases.

That may be because it’s highly unlikely that the call even came in on the alert phone.  As Atlantic’s Appelbaum points out, the red phone was connected to the commanding general of the Strategic Air Command and the Pentagon via “a dedicated, lead-encased cable” that no one other than the SAC four-star and the DOD in Washington could connect to.  Even if you had the “number.” 

(Those hotline phones don’t have telephone numbers like your home or office phone and mine do—seven digits and an area code.  Most are dedicated lines that only have one receiving instrument.  The calling officer just picks up the receiver at his end and the phone at the other end buzzes or sounds off in whatever way it’s rigged to do.  If there’s a case, like, say, POTUS or the Secretary of Defense, who has more than one line he or she can reach, there’s a code of some kind to make the connection, not an ordinary phone number.)

No, the Santa call almost certainly came in to one of the other phones on Shoup’s desk, which would have an unlisted number that, if she or he had it or stumbled on it, someone could connect to it by mistake.  (This way, when Shoup told his airmen to take the Santa calls, they could do so with the phones at their desks or stations.  Otherwise, they’d have to all be sitting at Shoup’s desk or dash over every time the phone rang.  That’s just nuts!  Besides, I doubt that the CONAD command would have countenanced using the hotline phone for a publicity stunt.  What if there were an emergency?)

The Atlantic also doubts that there was a “flood of calls” that followed that first one on that first day.  They argue, based on the theory that the initial connection was the result of a misdialed number, not a misprint, and that it isn’t logical that more children would make the same mistake.  (Of course, if the number was misprinted in the newspaper, then there could have been additional calls, but the magazine has dismissed that as unlikely.  But not impossible . . . .)

No, Appelbaum posits that the “flood” came later after Shoup took advantage of the happenstance and publicized the Santa line.

In any case, many students of Christmas tradition note that the Shoup-Santa story and the NORAD outgrowth is one of the few modern additions to the Santa Claus legend that’s actually become part of the lore.

Over the years, the publicity effort to bring children and families into NORAD Tracks Santa got bigger and more sophisticated.  It started out with just notices in newspapers every Christmas Eve.  Then, in the 1960s, NORAD sent radio stations records so that they could broadcast Santa’s progress between Christmas music.  

Meanwhile, the Air Force still sent out press releases so that the papers could plaster stories around the world.  By the 1970s, NORAD introduced 3-minute television commercials showing jets intercepting a foreign aircraft on Christmas Eve that stations around the U.S. could air.  

In the 1990s, NORAD’s Santa-tracker took to the World Wide Web.  NORAD Tracks Santa moved online in 1997. 

Including its three years under CONAD, 2024 was NORAD Tracks Santa’s 69th year on Santa watch.  The website, https://www.noradsanta.org, is now off line until 1 December 2025.  When it’s reactivated, visitors can watch Santa’s progress around the globe on Christmas Eve from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. on Christmas Day, Mountain Standard Time, as he delivers presents to the world’s children—in nine languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Korean, and Chinese. 

Saint Nick-watchers can also follow the trip on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/noradsanta), YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/NORADTracksSanta), Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/noradtrackssanta_official), and X (https://x.com/NoradSanta).  People can also call 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723) to ask live operators about Santa’s location on 24 December from 6 a.m. to midnight, Mountain Time.

Every year since 1958, NORAD has kept millions of children and families across the world apprised of Santa’s location on 24 December.  NORAD Tracks Santa subsists because of the support, services, and resources provided by volunteers and its government and corporate contributors.  NORAD Tracks Santa is financed by neither American nor Canadian taxpayers.

Typically, around 1,200 to 1,500 volunteers work at NORAD Tracks Santa each year, primarily consisting of military and civilian personnel from NORAD.  That many are needed because, said the public affairs specialist who ran the program in 2009, “Literally, when a volunteer puts the phone down after they get done with a call, it’s ringing again” (Daniel Terdiman, “Behind the scenes: NORAD's Santa tracker,” CNN 24 Dec. 2009).

Each year, the NORAD Tracks Santa website gets several million visitors from over 200 countries and territories around the world.  Volunteers answer more than 130,000 calls to the NORAD Tracks Santa hotline (see above) from boys and girls around the globe.  What started because of a child’s misdirected phone call has flourished and is recognized as one of the U.S. Department of Defense’s largest community outreach programs.  Textbooks for public relations courses cite NORAD Tracks Santa as a superb example of a Christmas-themed PR campaign.

In an interview with the Associated Press (reported in the AP article cited above), Air Force Lieutenant General Case Cunningham explained that NORAD radars in Alaska and Canada, of which he’s in command, are the first to detect Santa.  Santa leaves the North Pole and typically heads for the International Dateline in the Pacific Ocean.  From there he moves west, following the night.

“That’s when the satellite systems we use to track and identify targets of interest every single day start to kick in,” Cunningham said.  “A probably little-known fact is that Rudolph’s nose that glows red emanates a lot of heat.  And so those satellites track (Santa) through that heat source.”

NORAD puts out that it uses three systems to track Santa on his Christmas Eve journey:

• Radar (i.e., North Warning System – radar stations along the North American Arctic regions in Alaska and northern Canada)

• Satellites

• NORAD aircraft (American and Canadian fighters; American refueling tankers; and AWACS, the surveillance, command, control, and communications aircraft)

(Of course, we grown-ups know that the website only simulates the tracking of Santa.)

A caveat: an observation from which I stayed away in this post is the main topic of Matt Novak’s article on Gizmodo.  The title of his post is “How the US Military Turned Santa Claus Into a Cold War Icon, published on 23 December 2014.  As you might guess, Novak is distressed about the militarization of Santa Claus at the hands of NORAD and Harry Shoup’s successors.  He’s not wrong, and he makes a good argument for his concern.

I didn’t bring this issue up because my interest for Rick On Theater is just the story, not its impact on the legend of Saint Nicholas.  Perhaps I’ve got blinders on, but that’s where I stand as far as this post is concerned.  But, then, I have no children and it’s been a long time since I was one.  Christmas to me is only the day when I turn a year older.

But back to Novak and his point.  (Several other writers whose reports on the CONAD/NORAD project I read raise this issue as well, but the Gizmodo blogger focused on it.) 

He pointed out that in its advertising of NORAD Tracks Santa, the Air Force was “heavily promoting the idea that Santa Claus was a Cold Warrior.”  He described “a rather alarming video” during one holiday period “showing fighter jets escorting Santa.” 

Novak also invokes “children’s advocacy groups like Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood,” who, he asserts, “said they were uncomfortable with the violent undertones of the Santa Tracker campaign.”  

As NORAD’s response, Novak quoted a spokesman as saying to the AP: “We really do feel strongly that it’s something that is safe and non-threatening, and not something that would negatively impact children. In fact, we think that it’s a lot of fun.”

Novak doesn’t say so, but it seems he feels that if one follows the NORAD Santa-tracker and visits the website, one’s buying into, and therefore perpetuating the militarizing of Santa Claus.  (I embedded the link to Matt Novak’s Gizmodo post above, but here it is again, so you can check out his argument.)

[Harry Wesley Shoup was born on 29 September 1917 in Bessemer, Pennsylvania.  He went to Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where he met Louise Lane, his future wife.  He and Lane were married on 8 February 1941 in Montgomery, Alabama, and the couple had three daughters and a son.  

[Shoup joined the United States Army Air Corps on 6 June 1940 and served as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II.  (The USAAC became the USAAF in 1941 and the U.S. Air Force in 1947.)  While serving in the Air Force, Shoup received the Soldier’s Medal for saving another airman’s life.  

[(The Soldier’s Medal is a decoration of the U.S. Army, but prior to the creation of the Airman’s Medal in 1960, airmen were awarded the Soldier’s Medal.  The criteria for the medal are: “The Soldier’s Medal is awarded to any person of the Armed Forces of the United States or of a friendly foreign nation who, while serving in any capacity with the Army of the United States, including Reserve Component soldiers not serving in a duty status at the time of the heroic act, distinguished himself or herself by heroism not involving conflict with an enemy.”)

[Shoup had an illustrious career in the USAF for 28 years, also seeing action in Korea and Vietnam.   He became the Commander of the CONAD Combat Alert Center in February 1954 and held that post (after NORAD took over) until June 1965, when he was assigned to the 84th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron at Hamilton Air Force Base in California as Wing Commander.  He remained in that post until retiring from the USAF on 1 September 1968. 

[Shoup died at age 91 on 14 March 2009 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he and his wife, who died in 2003, had retired in 1983.  After Christmas 1955, he had acquired the nickname “The Santa Colonel”; for the remainder of his life, his family says, that was his proudest achievement.  Shoup is buried in the Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver, and his soubriquet is even inscribed on his gravestone.

[I’ve posted other Christmas-related pieces on Rick On Theater over the years.  On ROT’s first Christmas, I ran “‘Is There a Santa Claus?‘“ (25 December 2009), the text of the famous letter from little Virginia O’Hanlon in 1897 which asked “Is there a Santa Claus?” and the response from the New York Sun which answered “Yes.”  (As it happens, NORAD Tracks Santa sees itself as a follower of that exchange and the sentiment it radiates.)

[Subsequent Christmas posts are “‘It’s a Wonderful Life Was Based on a ‘Christmas Card’ Short Story by Philip Van Doren Stern‘“ by Daven Hiskey (26 December 2016), “‘Despite the Pandemic, It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like “Christmas Carol”‘“ by Jerald Raymond Pierce (27 December 2020), and “Spirit of 1907 Christmas, Recovered in 1999, Completed in 2016“ (21 December 2022).

[And in the spirit of Christmukkah, the convergence of Christmas and the first night or day of Hanukkah, as we had in 2024, I include “Dreidel“ (6 January 2024) in this list.]

Spirit of 1907 Christmas, Recovered in 1999, Completed in 2016

 

[On Christmas Day 2009, I posted what I labeled “Arguably the most famous editorial ever written.”  It contained the line, now world famous: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!”

[The column ran in the New York Sun of 21 September 1897 and was editor and editorial writer Francis Pharcellus Church’s reply to 8-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon’s letter asking “Is there a Santa Claus?”

[Below, I’m posting three news stories about a later Christmas letter, this one from 1907 from 10-year-old Mary McGann (later McGahan; 1897-1979).  As you’ll read, the letter to Santa was recovered by Peter Mattaliano (b. 1949) from a Hell’s Kitchen fireplace in 1999.

“‘CHRISTMAS SPIRIT PERSONIFIED’:
MAN’S SEARCH FOR GIRL WHO WROTE 1907 LETTER TO SANTA”
by Dana Jacobson

[This report was broadcast on CBS This Morning (the predecessor of CBS Mornings), a feature of CBS News, on 23 December 2016 (Man finds what happened to Mary McGann, girl who wrote 1907 letter to Santa, nearly 17 years after finding it in his chimney - CBS News).]

On the night before Christmas back in 1907, a 10-year-old girl in a New York City apartment wrote a letter to Santa. Following an Irish tradition, she sent it up the chimney.

A man found that letter nearly 17 years ago when he was renovating his fireplace. Ever since, he’s been working to learn more about the little girl. His long journey came to a satisfying conclusion just last week, reports CBS News correspondent Dana Jacobson.

“As I’m bringing bricks out, I find this little blue envelope written to Santa Claus in Reindeer Land,” Peter Mattaliano recalled. “And I open it up. And here’s this letter from – from Mary.”

“And you say, ‘Mary,’ like you know her. But at the time . . .” Jacobson said.

“I know,” Mattaliano said. “It’s funny.”

Mattaliano did not know anything about 10-year-old Mary McGann when he discovered her partially charred letter in his fireplace. He was struck by the last line of Mary’s note.

“My little brother would like a wagon that I know you cannot afford,” she wrote.

“She doesn’t ask for anything for herself and then says, ‘Please, do not forget the poor.’ I mean, you know, the spirit of Christmas, that generosity and maturity – she’s 10,” Mattaliano said.

So he set out to find Mary. The census records he dug up only told part of the story. That’s when the New York Times got involved.   

“They found where she was buried in four days. Mary McGann married George McGahan, OK?” Mattaliano said, laughing. “We get to the stone. And there it is, George McGahan. But Mary’s not on the stone.”
 
There was a space, but no name. Mary, who never had children and worked as a stenographer, died in 1979 at age 82. 

“A little girl who had that kind of emotional depth and generosity, has to be acknowledged,” Mattaliano said. “Even if there’ll be nobody to go visit, she has to be acknowledged.”

Mattaliano couldn’t add Mary’s name because he is not related; but someone else could. 

“Last January, an article appeared in our local newspaper here in Ireland,” Brian Dempsey recalled.

Dempsey is a physics teacher who lives outside of Dublin. He recognized his mother’s maiden name and discovered he’s a distant cousin of Mary’s. 

“It clicked,” Dempsey said “I know that. Amazing.” 

As Mary’s relative, Brian passed the right to add her name to Mattaliano in the form of a notarized letter. 

“I mean, look at it – it was obviously meant to be here,” Mattaliano said, standing beside her grave. 

Thirty-seven years after her death, Mary McGann’s name was engraved on her tombstone. 

“You got Mary’s name on that tombstone. What else has she given you?” Jacobson asked.

“Anytime things seem to be going south I still take a look at the letter. And I say, ‘All right. OK,’” Mattaliano said.

“It’s more than the Christmas spirit,” Jacobson said. 

“It’s the Christmas spirit personified,” Mattaliano said. 

*  *  *  *
“A CHRISTMAS REQUEST, 
ANSWERED A CENTURY LATER”
by Corey Kilgannon 

[This was Corey Kilgannon’s second report on Mary McGann’s letter to Santa.  It appeared in Section A (the news section) of the New York Times on 21 December 2016.]

The stonecutter walked along Row F of a section of Mount St. Mary Cemetery in Flushing, Queens, and stopped at Grave 108, marked with a modest gray granite headstone.

He held a stencil bearing the words “Loving Wife Mary” and the years 1897 and 1979, which frame the life of Mary McGahan, loving wife of George McGahan.

The couple was childless, and according to cemetery records, both were buried here. But for whatever reason, Mary’s name was never added to the headstone under that of her husband when she died three years after him.

This bothered Peter Mattaliano, 67, an acting coach and screenwriter, who is not related to Ms. McGahan and never even knew her.

The connection came by quirk of a poignant letter to Santa he found in the fireplace of his Hell’s Kitchen apartment 17 years ago. It had been written by Mary nearly a century earlier, when she lived as a child in the same apartment, and became the impetus for an article in The New York Times a year ago [see below] about serendipity and Christmas.

Mr. Mattaliano visited the grave at that time and was upset to see the gravestone lacking her name. He murmured a graveside promise to Mary that he would be back to remedy this.

Last week, he was back, with the stonecutter, who laid the stencil across the headstone and used a sandblaster to carve her name into granite permanence, 37 years after her death.

When Mr. Mattaliano moved into the fourth-floor apartment at 447 West 50th Street in 1999, the fireplace had long been bricked shut. Renovating it, he found Mary’s letter, along with one from her little brother, Alfred.

Alfred had written to Santa asking for a drum and a hook-and-ladder fire truck. Mary’s was more touching, hinting at the family’s poverty and her selflessness even at age 10.

She wrote asking Santa for a wagon for her brother “which I know you cannot afford,” and for herself “something nice what you think best.” She signed off with the request: “P.S. Please do not forget the poor.”

Mr. Mattaliano was haunted by that reminder from a poor girl who requested a wagon for her brother first and nothing specific for herself.

“For somebody to show that kind of humanity at that early age,” he said. “I just could not stand to see her be forgotten.”

He would later learn from historical records that the siblings’ father had died abruptly and that they were being raised by their mother. She was a dressmaker who, records indicated, had given birth to three other children who did not survive infancy.

He found that Mary was born Mary McGann and wound up marrying the similarly named George McGahan, and that both of her parents wound up buried in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, in unmarked graves.

All of this hit home for Mr. Mattaliano, a bachelor with no children. He was 12 when his own father died. He and his three brothers saw some lean Christmases along with their mother in their Jersey City apartment.

He had the letters to Santa framed and began displaying them year-round above the fireplace. Every December, he honors Mary and Alfred by putting up Christmas decorations and laying out their presents: a fire truck for him and a doll for her.

“I’m sharing their space,” he said, of their continued presence in his apartment.

The story is well known among his friends, neighbors and even his acting students, who have included the likes of Jill Clayburgh and Javier Munoz, who now plays Alexander Hamilton [2016-18] in the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

Over the years he wrote and polished a whimsical Christmas-themed movie script based on the letters. He has assembled a production team and is speaking to investors to finance the film, which he calls “Present From the Past.”

Visiting Ms. McGahan’s grave last December, Mr. Mattaliano planted a small tree near the grave and then patted the grave and promised that, “I’ll be back.”

Cemetery staff members told him that to add her name, he needed permission from the buyer of the plot (who is deceased) or a relative (he could find none).

Then he heard from a distant cousin of Mary’s, a man living in Ireland who read about Mr. Mattaliano’s story in an Irish newspaper article.

The cousin, Brian Dempsey, 56, a schoolteacher from County Kildare, agreed to send Mr. Mattaliano a notarized letter granting permission to add Ms. McGahan’s name. He also sent a bag of soil he scooped from a field near the small farm in Lullymore where Mary’s mother grew up before emigrating.

Even with the letter, Mr. Mattaliano still had problems getting the cemetery’s permission. For help, he contacted Michael Lewis, who owns an established monument company in Queens, but by early December, it still seemed that yet another Christmas would pass with Ms. McGahan’s going unacknowledged in her grave.

Then, a bit of holiday magic happened: the Metropolitan Cemetery Association held its annual holiday luncheon in a catering hall on Jericho Turnpike, a few miles from Ms. McGahan’s grave site.

A board member of the group, Jan Neuman, had enjoyed The Times story and had invited Mr. Mattaliano to the meeting to share the story with his members.

Mr. Mattaliano attended and, with the timing of a seasoned acting coach, told the story of the little girl’s big-hearted letter to Santa and where that girl wound up. Then he paused, and decided to plead his case in the room filled with cemetery officials.

A hand shot up. It belonged to Stephen Comando, executive director of Catholic Cemeteries, associated with the Diocese of Brooklyn, which includes Mount St. Mary Cemetery. The group was unaware of the difficulty, Mr. Comando said.

The necessary approvals were obtained and within two weeks, Mr. Mattaliano was smiling as the stonecutter finished engraving “Loving Wife Mary” into the granite.

Mr. Mattaliano knelt at the gravestone and sprinkled the small bag of Irish soil in front of it.

“Even if there’s no family to visit,” he said, “at least she’ll be acknowledged.”

*  *  *  *
“A CHIMNEY’S POIGNANT SURPRISE: 
LETTERS SANTA MISSED, LONG AGO”
by Corey Kilgannon

[Before Corey Kilgannon wrote the 2016 article for the New York Times, the reporter published this earlier story on 22 December 2015 in Section A (news).]

Last week, Peter Mattaliano, 66, an acting coach and screenwriter, put up Christmas decorations in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment and laid out presents for the children: Mary and Alfred.

These are not Mr. Mattaliano’s children, and they are no longer living. But a century ago they lived in what is now Mr. Mattaliano’s home.

He has honored Mary and Alfred every December for the past 15 years, ever since he learned of their existence when he renovated his fireplace. It had been sealed with brick for more than 60 years.

“My brother does construction, and I had him open up the fireplace,” he said. “We were joking that we might find Al Capone’s money. Then my brother yelled to me and said, ‘You’re not going to believe this.’”

In the rubble and dust, Mr. Mattaliano’s brother found a delicate piece of paper with faint children’s scrawl bearing a request to Santa from a century earlier.

“I want a drum and a hook and ladder,” read the letter, adding that the fire truck should be one with an “extentionisting” ladder. It was dated 1905 and signed “Alfred McGann,” who included the building’s address.

There was another item in the rubble: a small envelope addressed to Santa in “Raindeerland.” Inside was a second letter, this one dated 1907 and written by Alfred’s older sister, Mary, who had drawn a reindeer stamp as postage.

“The letters were written in this room, and for 100 years, they were just sitting there, waiting,” said Mr. Mattaliano.

He learned through online genealogical research that the siblings were the children of Patrick and Esther McGann, Irish immigrants who married in 1896. Mary was born in 1897 and Alfred in 1900.

The family lived at 447 West 50th Street, where Mr. Mattaliano now lives in a fourth-floor apartment filled with books on acting and mementos from his days as a fast-pitch knuckleballer.

Patrick McGann died in 1904, so by the time the children wrote the letters left in the chimney, they were being raised by Ms. McGann, a dressmaker.

Mary’s letter is as poignant as Alfred’s is endearing.

“Dear Santa Claus: I am very glad that you are coming around tonight,” it reads, the paper partly charred. “My little brother would like you to bring him a wagon which I know you cannot afford. I will ask you to bring him whatever you think best. Please bring me something nice what you think best.”

She signed it Mary McGann and added, “P.S. Please do not forget the poor.”

Mr. Mattaliano, who has read the letter countless times, still shakes his head at the implied poverty, the stoicism and the selflessness of the last line, all from a girl who requests a wagon for her brother first and nothing specific for herself.

“This is a family that couldn’t afford a wagon, and she’s writing, ‘Don’t forget the poor,’ ” he said. “That just shot an arrow through me. What did she think poor was?”

Then there was the fact that the letters had survived at all, perhaps avoiding incineration by being tucked on a ledge or in a crevice in the chimney.

The letters have become “my most treasured possessions,” said Mr. Mattaliano, who had them framed and displays them year-round above the mantel of the fireplace where they had been discovered. On Friday, they were joined by ornaments and mementos, along with a dump truck, a miniature wagon and a doll. “I wanted them to have a Christmas present, even if it was 100 years too late,” he said.

The story is well known among his friends, neighbors, acting students and the regulars at a longstanding Friday night poker game.

“I’m the new guy in the group, and I’ve been there since the late ’80s,” said Mr. Mattaliano, whose roster of actors he has coached includes Jill Clayburgh and Matthew Morrison.

For Mr. Mattaliano, the letters summoned a link to his years growing up in an apartment in Jersey City. He would leave letters to Santa under the tree on Christmas Eve.

When Mr. Mattaliano was 12, his father, who was 47, died of cancer just before Christmas, leaving his mother, Margaret Costello, to raise him and his three younger brothers on her own.

“So we had a few rough years,” he said. “For the next couple years, our Christmases were a little lean.”

Mr. Mattaliano, who has lived in Hell’s Kitchen for 36 years, saw the children’s letters as a testament to the immigrant struggle in New York.

“I’m sharing their space,” he said. Their spirits remain in the apartment, he believes, forever young, in something of a Hell’s Kitchen snow globe.

He has written a movie script based on the letters, titled “Present From the Past.” It is fictionalized, but includes the letters quoted word for word and the children depicted as spirits in the apartment.

Mr. Mattaliano said he had attracted the interest of investors and hoped to start working on the film by the spring, using Broadway actors and shooting in Hell’s Kitchen and indoors on a set that replicates his apartment.

But even after he had written the script, he knew almost nothing about Alfred or Mary. He wanted to know more, and he wanted to give the letters to their family.

He began looking on genealogy websites and found census data that had basic information about the family. With the help of a reporter and a researcher from The New York Times, he found out more, including the father’s death.

By 1920, Mary, Alfred and their mother had moved up to West 76th Street. As young adults, Mary worked as a stenographer and Alfred as a printer. By 1930, Mary had married the similarly named George McGahan and moved to the Bronx, and later to Queens. Her brother also married.

But, so far, Mr. Mattaliano has not found any living blood relative. Neither sibling appeared to have children and both apparently died in Queens; Mary in 1979, at 82, three years after her husband. She is buried in Flushing. Alfred’s burial location is unclear, perhaps because his birth name was John Alfonse McGann. He seems to have died childless in 1965 in Queens. His wife, Mae, died in 1991.

Mr. Mattaliano met with Bruce Abrams, a volunteer at the Division of Old Records in the Surrogate’s Court in Lower Manhattan, and saw proof of the 1904 death of the children’s father.

“So their mother became the breadwinner — that’s why they couldn’t afford a wagon,” he said. “She was a widow at 35 with two kids.”

On a recent weekday, Mr. Mattaliano took the No. 7 train to Flushing, carrying a small, potted tree for Ms. McGahan’s grave site. He walked into the office at Mount St. Mary’s Cemetery and was told her grave location: Division 11, Row F, Grave 108.

The modest headstone bore the name McGahan, but only her husband’s name, George, not Mary’s.

Mr. Mattaliano said he would look into having Ms. McGahan’s name added to the gravestone. He put his hand on the grave and murmured little Mary’s Christmas reminder to Santa: “Please do not forget the poor.”

“You know, I might have to come out here every Christmas,” he said as he turned to leave, and then added over his shoulder, “I’ll be back.”