For 70 years, NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, has pulled off one of the most charming public-facing “missions” in the U.S. defense world: tracking Santa’s Christmas Eve journey in real time and taking hundreds of thousands of phone calls a year from kids who want to know the whereabouts of St. Nicholas – and how soon he might visit their neighborhood.
The tradition is rooted in Colorado Springs, run out of Peterson Space Force Base, and powered by a phone bank of more than 1,000 volunteers. Total calls hit an all-time peak of 430,000 in 2023.
This year, there are two modern add-ons. NORAD is introducing a web-based calling option that should make it easier for anyone without phone access, as well as for families outside North America, to connect with the Santa Operations Center. And OpenAI has teamed up with NORAD on three ChatGPT holiday tools aimed at adding some extra creative fun alongside the tracker.
The tradition that began with a wrong number
NORAD, a joint U.S. and Canadian operation, traces the start of the tradition back to 1955. A Sears department store ad that year encouraged kids to call Santa, but a misprinted phone number sent some calls to a military operations line in Colorado Springs. Instead of shutting it down, Col. Harry Shoup played along, and a small moment of holiday kindness turned into an annual ritual.
Today, the tracker is a global production. On Dec. 24, families can follow along online and via an app, and they can call a toll-free hotline staffed by hundreds of volunteers. On Christmas Eve of 2024, the website, NoradSanta.org, received approximately 32 million visitors from around the world.
What's new this year
NORAD says the hotline, 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723), will be staffed on Christmas Eve Day from 4 a.m. to midnight MST, with translation support for more than 200 languages.
The notable change for 2025 is a web-based calling option built into the NORAD Tracks Santa website, aimed at kids and families who cannot call by phone, including people outside North America.
What powers the tracker - it's not AI
NORAD has always framed the “tracking” side of NORAD Tracks Santa as a playful holiday version of what it does year-round: monitoring airspace with systems like radar and satellites.
That distinction matters now, because it's easy to assume the tracker is “AI-powered," if only because AI is everywhere. In a 2024 explainer, Axios quoted a NORAD spokesperson saying the command relies on traditional tracking methods rather than artificial intelligence for the Santa mission.
What has changed over time is the digital experience. The modern tracker includes a polished, web-based globe visualization. Cesium, which provides the 3D geospatial technology behind the site’s globe experience, published a post this month describing how the tracker visualizes Santa’s real-time location in 3D using CesiumJS.
The AI add-ons: ChatGPT holiday treats for kids
On Dec. 1, OpenAI published a short note saying it worked with NORAD to create three holiday tools inside ChatGPT, and that they are included as part of the NORAD Tracks Santa experience online. OpenAI lists them as Elf Enrollment, Santa’s Toy Lab, and Christmas Story Creator.
OpenAI describes the tools this way:
- Elf Enrollment: upload a photo and get an “official” Santa’s helper style image.
- Santa’s Toy Lab: describe a dream toy and receive printable line art, essentially a coloring page.
- Christmas Story Creator: enter names and details to generate a personalized holiday story.
The OpenAI part is basically a holiday content layer, stories and creative prompts, sitting next to the tracker, not changing what NORAD actually does.
The tech behind the tracker
The cool part of 'NORAD Tracks Santa' – the spinning globe, smooth zooms and “Santa in motion” visuals – is essentially a modern web-graphics build delivered at holiday scale. The experience uses CesiumJS, a WebGL-based 3D globe and mapping engine, to render terrain and imagery, layer in a starfield, and animate a 3D Santa sleigh as location updates come in.
A big reason it works on everyday phones and laptops is efficiency: The globe can stream data in pieces, showing lower-detail imagery when you are zoomed out and progressively sharper tiles as you zoom in, rather than trying to load the whole planet at once. That “load what you need, when you need it” approach is what makes the tracker feel smooth instead of sluggish.
This is not a new idea. In 2015, an NVIDIA blogpost pointed to NORAD Tracks Santa as a real-world example of GPU-accelerated web graphics in action, describing how modern browsers can use WebGL to tap into graphics hardware for smoother 3D rendering, including visual flourishes like snow and sparkles around Santa, and emphasizing the challenge of delivering that experience to a massive audience on Christmas Eve.
What this means, beyond the holiday fun
In the big picture, this is a tidy example of how good old AI is showing up in everyday life: not always as a replacement story, but as an add-on that makes an existing experience more interactive – and sometimes, more fun.
The core tradition remains the same, and it still runs through Colorado Springs: a team of volunteers, a hotline, and a tracker built to keep millions of families entertained on Christmas Eve. The newest layer is a mix of accessibility upgrades, including web calling, and optional creative features, including the ChatGPT holiday tools.
Of course, the most important question this Christmas is the same as always: Have you been good this year?
How to follow Santa
- Call: 1-877-HI-NORAD (1-877-446-6723)
- Call hours: 4 a.m. to midnight MST on Dec. 24
- Track online: NORADSanta.org
