Santa’s online!

How do you know Santa’s real?

Just check the Internet – You can find him via Facebook, Twitter and NORAD’s Santa Tracker website.

NORAD – the North American Aerospace Defense Command Center – has been tracking Santa’s flight around the globe each Christmas season since 1955 – although the Internet angle is relatively recent.

This year, the official Santa tracking begins Dec. 1 at www.noradsanta.org.

The program started with a misprint – A Colorado newspaper article gave children a phone number to call to talk to Santa, but a typo sent those calls to the Continental Air Defense Command Center in Colorado Springs, the predecessor to NORAD.

The officer in charge that night, Col. Harry Shoup, told the staff to give any children who called a current location for Santa.

According to Wikipedia, volunteers now man the phone lines for NORAD and the operation is as high tech as the North Pole can get. It has used Google Analytics and Bing for logistics and mapping in recent years.

The team handles 12,000 emails and more than 70,000 phone calls during the season – but mostly from 2 a.m. Dec. 24 to 3 a.m. Dec. 25.

Last year, NORAD reported some 19.58 million unique visitors to its tracker website on Christmas Eve. And match this: it had 146,307 Twitter followers and 1.45 million likes on Facebook.