"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.]

“Is There a Santa Claus?”

[Francis Pharcellus Church, New York Sun 21 Sept. 1897: 6. Arguably the most famous editorial ever written--and certainly the most-often reprinted (including in the Sun in 1943 and the Saturday Evening Post in 1988 and 1997)--this column was a response to a letter written by eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon (later Douglas) and gives the answer, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus!” a line often repeated, parodied, and paraphrased for many purposes during the holiday season. O’Hanlon’s brief letter is included in the response. It is interesting to note that Church, an editorial writer who didn’t even get a by-line for this essay, didn’t want to write the answer when his editor handed him O’Hanlon’s letter. It became an instant sensation.

[Most of us have heard the famous line and we may even know the story, but I wonder how many of us have actually read Francis Church's whole essay. It seems to me worth the time to reprint the wonderful editorial once more.]

We take pleasure in answering at once and thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:

"Dear Editor: I am 8 years old.

"Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.

"Papa says, 'If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.'

"Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?

"Virginia O’Hanlon

"115 West Ninety-fifth Street.”

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You may tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

[The story of Virginia, her letter, and Church’s response in The Sun is told many times every year at Christmastime. I’m not Christian, but my birthday is Christmas Day and I have always loved this editorial and the idea it promulgates. I made a copy of the original column some years ago with the idea of making a holiday card of it, but I’ve never come up with a suitable idea. It seems right, on this day, to spread the sentiment, now 112 years old—but timeless and enduring.

[Laura Virginia O'Hanlon was born on 20 July 1889 in Manhattan. She married Edward Douglas, whom she divorced after a short marriage. She graduated from Hunter College in 1910 and got an MA from Columbia in 1912 and then a Ph.D. from Fordham. She taught in the New York City school system from 1912 until she retired, as a principal, in 1959. Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas died in Valatie, New York, on 13 May 1971. Her original letter, thought to have been destroyed in a house fire, was discovered intact; it was authenticated by PBS’s Antiques Roadshow in 1998 and evaluated at $50,000.

[Francis Pharcellus Church, the son of a Baptist minister, was born in Rochester on 22 February 1839. He was a New York Times correspondent during the Civil War and wrote for the New York Sun, where his brother, William Conant Church, was an editor, for 20 years. Church married late in life and had no children; he died in New York City on 11 April 1906.]