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By Erika Rolling

Christmas

Track Santa’s route on Christmas Eve

Dec 23, 2023 | 8:00 AM

Santa Claus is coming to town, and you can track his every move on his Christmas Eve flight around the world thanks to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

For the past 68 years, on Christmas Eve NORAD has volunteers from Canada and the United States answering phone calls and emails from around the world to know where St. Nick is on his annual journey.

NORAD doesn’t just track Santa though, every single day NORAD tracks airplanes, missiles, space launches, and anything that comes into North American aerospace, as well as completing other important missions.

NORAD says Santa arrives to your home anywhere between 9:00 p.m. -12:00 a.m., but only will stop in if children are asleep. If they are awake, he has to move on to other homes and circle back when little ones are sleeping.

It may seem impossible that Santa can stop at everyone’s house, but NORAD intelligence reports indicate that Santa does not experience time the same as we do, and the only logical conclusion they believe is that he functions on his own time-space continuum.

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The NORAD Tracks Santa Operations Centre will be fully operational starting at 4 a.m. MST on Christmas Eve, and can be reached at 1-877-446-6723 to talk directly to a NORAD staff member to be able to tell you where Santa’s exact location. People will be able to call the operations centre until midnight.

On Dec. 24, 2022 alone, operators answered over 73,000 calls.

You can also head to the NORAD Tracks Santa website, where there is a plethora of holiday themed activities, games, and NORAD information can be found, along with the online tracker starting at 4:00 a.m. MST.