NORAD's Amazing 60-Year Santa Tracking History (networkworld.com)

coondoggie writes: The National Archive blog takes a look at the background of the nation's premier defense unit's 60 years of tracking of Santa as he travels around the globe delivering his Christmas goodies. Colonel Harry Shoup began the tradition in 1955, after receiving a phone call from a child expecting to reach Santa Claus. The misdirected call was the result of the child reversing two numbers of a Santa Line phone number printed in a Sears advertisement, according to the National Archives.

Comments

Re:What happened to political correctness??

[Anonymous Coward]

Christmas trees have started being popular in Europe during 19th century, and first appeared at earliest in 16th, so yeah, definitely pagan tradition, lots of pagans in Europe in that time to lift that tradition from. Santa Claus, at least what he was before Coca Cola turned him into a corporate monstrosity guilt-tripping people into going on gift-shopping sprees, comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas so yeah, totally pagan too. Oh and of course celebration of winter solstice which occurs on 21st or 22nd on 25th - totally makes sense, because reasons. And pagans. Don't forget, they have a Gaia-given monopoly on celebrations in winter (and summer, and spring, and autumn), and anyone else who does so infringes on their intellectual property.

Re:What happened to political correctness??

[mark-t]

The term Xmas is over a thousand years old, and is derived from what was at one time a fairly common usage of a capital letter X to denote Christ (possibly derived from the fact that the word Christ itself begins with a letter that resembles an 'X' in Greek). The term itself originated with Christians (and among those who could write, they may have denoted themselves as X-tians). While there are Christians today that object to "Xmas" under the notion that it allegedly "takes Christ out of Christmas", this objection is driven by ignorance of the actual origin of the term. "Xmas" does not take Christ out of Christmas, and if anything, highlights the association even more strongly by using an archaic form to emphasize it.

If you object to "Christmas" because you don't believe in the story behind it, you may want to reconsider what you call it.