In 1955 a department store in Colorado Springs had a marvelous marketing idea and advertised a telephone number that children could ring to speak to Santa and tell him their Christmas wishes. A fabulous idea. Except they printed the wrong telephone number. Not only that but they actually gave out the phone number to Colorado Springs' Continental Air Defense Command Center (CONAD). Hard to imagine in this day and age of super security. Instead of getting upset and suing the paper and all who work for her, Colonel Harry Shoup, who was on duty that night, told his staff to give all children who called in a "current location" for Santa Claus and a tradition was born.
Such a powerful and hopeful tradition that it managed to continue even when NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) replaced CONAD in 1958 and now NORAD tracks Santa Claus as he leaves the North Pole and delivers presents to children around the world. Today, NORAD relies completely on both NORAD military and civilian personnel volunteers to make the program possible. Each volunteer handles around forty phone calls per hour. Between the twenty-five hours from 2 a.m. on December 24 until 3 a.m. on December 25 the team typically handles more than 12,000 e-mails and more than 70,000 telephone calls from more than two hundred countries and territories.
But, if that isn’t good enough, if you are very lucky and look up into the night sky at the right place, at the right time on Christmas Eve you might actually spot the bright glow of Santa's sleigh flying high over the earth on his way to the children who are already sleeping.
I have done this with my kids for the past three years and it has become a treasured tradition which I hope we will continue long after the 'magic' of Santa has disappeared. The look on their faces as they spot a star brighter than the rest sailing in an arc across the sky is priceless. Pssst, I’ll let you in on a little secret... It's not really Santa, but the astronauts on the International Space Station passing overhead – which is still something pretty amazing if you ask me!
The ISS is the largest man-made object in space and is bigger than a football pitch. It reflects the sun's light as it passes overhead and so appears as a giant, star-like object without flashing lights moving across the night sky. But on Christmas Eve, with the right build up it can definitely pass for the famous man and his sleigh on his way to drop presents off to good girls and boys around the world.
Talented physicist and TV personality Brian Cox explains how Santa uses black holes in space to allow him to make shortcuts through space and time and pass through the air at record speed. In a clip for the BBC, Cox said a clear sky on Christmas Eve could reveal all.
"If you're really lucky," he said, "you might just see a flash of light as Father Christmas emerges from one of these black holes, making his way around the world delivering all his presents, to all the children, just in time for Christmas morning."
But, he adds, it's important not to stay up too late, as "Santa won't come".
Just keep your fingers crossed for cloudless skies...
You can use NASA's Spot the Station tool to work out when exactly you can see the ISS, based on the location of your nearest town/city.