US-Canada military center 'tracks' Santa for 68th year

A joint US-Canadian military monitoring agency continued this year its decades-long Christmas tradition of tracking Santa's whereabouts, helping children around the globe find out when his reindeer-powered, present-filled sleigh would be coming to town.

A 3-D, interactive website at www.noradsanta.org showed Santa Claus and his reindeer on their imagined worldwide delivery route, allowing users to click and learn more about the various cities along the way.

The Santa tracker presented by the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) dates to 1955, when a Colorado newspaper advertisement printed a phone number to connect children with Santa but mistakenly directed them to the hotline for the military nerve center.

To avoid disappointing the little ones, NORAD's director of operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, ordered his staff to check the radar to see where Old Saint Nick might be and update the children on his location.

When not spreading holiday cheer, NORAD conducts aerospace and maritime control and warning operations -- including monitoring for missile launches from North Korea, something that may have been on Santa's mind this year as he passed over, with the most recent ICBM test just days ago.

Sixty-eight years later NORAD was continuing its tradition of setting up a temporary call center out of its Colorado headquarters to answer children's burning questions.

A photo posted by the group on Facebook showed rows of people answering phones, some in uniform and others wearing red Santa caps.

Some top-level US dignitaries -- namely President Joe Biden and wife Jill Biden -- joined in on the holiday action.

"This evening, the President and First Lady participated in the North American Aerospace Defense Command Santa tracking calls with children and families across the country," the White House said in a statement.

Earlier Sunday the tracker went down for a short while, leaving children in the Pacific region in the dark about his exact position.

"Hey #SantaTrackers! We may be having a couple of technical difficulties with our tracking map, but #Santa is still flying! He is headed to Fiji next!" the group which runs the tracker said on its Facebook page, before announcing a fix one hour later.

Father Christmas had begun his journey with an out-of-this-world first stop, according to NORAD: the International Space Station orbiting Earth.

The reindeer-pulled sleigh was also seen traversing Israel as well as flying over southern Gaza, criss-crossing Africa, and venturing southward to Palmer Station, a research facility in Antarctica.

Santa then headed up through South America, bound for the United States as he unloaded approximately 100,000 gifts every second.

Around 10:00 pm local time (0300 GMT), Kris Kringle and his reindeer were spotted entering US airspace near Fort Lauderdale, Florida, before continuing their journey across the rest of the country -- with nearly 5.5 billion presents, and counting, delivered worldwide.

Surfing Santas ride waves, raise funds in Florida

Santas of all stripes descended on Florida's Cocoa Beach this Christmas Eve -- not to deliver presents, but to ride some waves and raise funds for a good cause.

Beginning early Sunday, the beach filled up with thousands of adults and children alike dressed as St Nick, elves or reindeer for the annual "Surfing Santas" celebration.

Launched in 2009, the event raises funds for Grind for Life, a charity helping cancer patients travel for treatment, as well as the local surf museum.

While dozens of wetsuit-clad surfers headed out into the chilly water -- albeit much warmer than the North Pole -- others were content to lounge on the beach under cloudy skies, sipping cocktails and taking in the programming, including a costume contest and Hawaiian dance show.

Under a tent, volunteers were selling T-shirts and raffle tickets to raise funds.

Cocoa Beach lies along Florida's so-called Space Coast, just south of Cape Canaveral.

-'Warms my heart' -

"Surfing Santas" was born in 2009 from the mind of Cocoa Beach resident George Trosset after he saw a TV advertisement in which several people dressed as Santa take surfboards out of a car and jump in the ocean.

Inspired by the ad, he went to a thrift store, bought an old red coat, tailored it to look like Santa's and went surfing. With him were his son, dressed as an elf, and his three-year-old grandson, who watched from the shore.

A local photographer captured that moment and published the image in the press.

"The second year, we had 19 Santas. The third year we had 80... and now look at this. There's thousands of people," Trosset, now 70, told AFP.

"It's so exciting to see what this goofy little thing has turned into."

Teresa Dell'Oglio-Garrett, an Italian native who lives outside Cocoa Beach, visited the festival for a second time to enjoy the "camaraderie and the happiness in the air."

She remembers that when she first attended, back in 2017, there were only a few people, nothing like the crowd gathered Sunday morning on the beach.

Trosset still can't figure out how a little joke with his son and grandson turned into this celebration.

When hundreds of people started joining the party, he thought maybe he could use the pull to do some good, and the charitable part of the event was born.

"I'm told that we get millions of media impressions every year from surfing Santa," said Trosset.

"If that's true, then we create millions of smiles every year -- and that warms my heart."