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Every Christmas Eve for over 60 years the North American Aerospace Defense Command has scrambled its high-tech systems for the special mission of tracking the exact location of Santa Claus as he makes his way around the globe.
You can monitor Santa's progress by clicking here — all without leaving your house or putting down your smartphone.
Santa will have already delivered billions of gifts across the world before arriving in Connecticut sometime after midnight, according to noradsanta.org.
NORAD uses radar, satellites, Santa Cams and fighter jets to track Santa on Dec. 24, according to the NORAD website.
The program started in 1955 when an advertisement suggested children call Santa directly. But the phone number was misprinted and actually rang through to the crew commander on duty at the Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center, Col. Harry Shoup. That began a tradition that NORAD continued after its creation in 1958.
Santa Claus left the North Pole and started his journey at about 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, starting in Russia's far Eastern areas. By Christmas morning, he will have completed his annual trip of circumnavigating the globe and touching down in homes around the world.
How is this even possible? NORAD officials have a theory.
"NORAD intelligence reports indicate that Santa does not experience time the way we do," the NORAD website says. "His trip seems to take 24 hours to us, but to Santa it might last days, weeks or even months. Santa would not want to rush the important job of delivering presents to children and spreading joy to everyone, so the only logical conclusion is that Santa somehow functions within his own time-space continuum."
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