Thursday Morning Guest Rant Christmas Cheer

In 1955, the Sears-Roebuck department store in Colorado Springs had a Christmas promotion. They opened a phone line so kids could call Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. This promotion was across both print and radio. Kids were encouraged to give Santa a ring. To try to reduce the chances of a bunch of kids calling random strangers, the ads were very clear: do not dial the wrong number.

The copywriters, however, didn't get the memo. The kids called the number in the ad, but did not get to talk Saint Nick. Thanks to a transposition in the published telephone number, they ended up calling what is perhaps the one number that should never, for any reason, be slammed with phone calls from the public. The number was not only wrong, it was spectacularly wrong. The number Sears published in the ad rang directly through to the "Red Phone" at NORAD's air defense operations center.

The man on the other end of the line was not Santa Claus, but Colonel Harry Shoup, USAF. He was, understandably, displeased when he picked up the phone to hear a child ask for Santa Claus. Assuming that this was a random crank call to one of America's more important telephone numbers, he wasn't particularly nice about it and the child started to cry. To mollify the child, Shoup then gave him a hearty "HO HO HO" and asked to talk to the child's mother.

The mother informed Shoup that the little boy had called the number in the Sears ad. Shoup assumed it was a misdial and asked the woman to read off the ad to him. She did, and that is when Shoup learned that the child had not misdialed. He called the number Sears told him to call - it just happened to be the wrong number. They disconnected and the phone immediately rang again. And again.

Whoops. What to do about this?

Col. Shoup called up the chain to tell them that if they had an emergency, they should not call the red phone. Then he assigned a couple of airmen to answer the phone when it rang, to tell the kids that Sears had the wrong number, and to play along so as to not ruin Christmas.

As instructed, when the kids called in, the airmen would tell them that they had in fact reached NORAD and so they couldn't talk to Santa - but that NORAD could tell the kids where Santa was. They'd play along and give a status update as to Santa's location. "I see a UFO on RADAR, and it must be Santa's sleigh over ..." Things like that. The kids got a neat story for Christmas and Shoup handled the problem masterfully.

The subsequent press activity also used the exercise to get in a jab at the Soviets, assuring people that American forces would guard Santa against attacks from those who do not believe in Christmas. It went on from there, and NORAD began to "track Santa" every year. Nowadays, it's done via the web (of course) on the "NORAD Tracks Santa" site.

A misprint and a quick-thinking Air Force colonel gave our country one of our odder - but nonetheless delightful - small Christmas traditions.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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