In early December 1955, the telephone rang at an Air Force base in Colorado Springs. Officers on guard duty at the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD), defending the skies over the United States and Canada, stiffened.

The Cold War was in full swing and tensions were high.

The command’s chief of operations, Col. Harry Shoup, answered the call. A child’s voice came from the other end and asked, “Is that Santa Claus?”

According to the colonel’s daughter, Terri Van Keuren, now 75, her father initially thought it was a prank and replied, “I’m the commander of the Combat Alert Center.” Who is that?”

In response, the child began to cry and asked if he was one of “Santa’s helpers.”

The colonel then decided to play along, replying that he was indeed Santa Claus and uttering a convincing “Ho-ho-ho.”

That surprise call began the nearly 70-year tradition of Santa Tracker, which allows children around the world to track Santa’s whereabouts via a live stream and a phone line answered by volunteers.

It is now led by CONAD’s successor, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

But how did a child apparently get the phone number of a US Air Force colonel?

American department store Sears ran an ad in a local newspaper telling children they could call Santa Claus, Terri explains.

“They misprinted a digit in the phone number. And it was Dad’s top secret number.”

Colonel Shoup called the telephone company and asked for a new number for his office.

Meanwhile, the phone at CONAD was ringing “incessantly,” and Colonel Shoup told his staff to answer the calls as Santa Claus.

In the story told by Terri, her parents arrived at the base on December 24 of that year to deliver cookies to those on duty and found the military installation to be unusually festive.

A map writer had drawn a picture of a sled on Plexiglas, which was used to mark the locations of unknown flying objects.

“The next thing they knew, Dad was calling the radio station. “This is Colonel Shoup, the commander of the Combat Alert Center in Colorado Springs.” And we have an unidentified flying object. “It looks like a sleigh,” Terri says.

Terri, who lives in Castle Rock, Colorado, was six years old when her father became “Santa Colonel.” She says the NORAD Santa Tracker, which reaches millions of children around the world every year, is his “legacy.”

NORAD’s pursuit of Santa Claus is a standalone military operation that begins on December 1st.

Brigadier General Jocelyn Schermerhorn, a senior US military officer in Canada, tells Sky News how the day unfolds on Christmas Eve.

“We brought together about a thousand people to set up the operations center to track Santa and allow anyone to call to check on his whereabouts.”

Volunteers are responsible for answering the calls of tens of thousands of children around the world. In 2022, 78,000 calls were answered at Peterson Space Force Base.

Terri was one of those volunteers for 10 years. “I always wore a T-shirt with a picture of my father. It said, ‘My father is the Santa Colonel’.”

What’s next for the Santa Tracker? Terri says her father’s celebratory story is so famous that she’s had “several requests to make it into a film.”

Visit YouTube and other Sky News social media channels to watch NORAD’s Santa Tracker and find out where in the world he’s delivering presents.