Santa is on his Way!!!!!

[eots]

They wouldn't mess with the fat jolly red dude! Not if they want any presents!

Merry Christmas Eots!

and a Merry Christmas to you tigerbob..!

 

[Angel Heart]

Can't believe people still think it's okay to lie to their kids ... oh well, as long as they don't expect their kids to ever tell them the truth when they find out.

Not all of us lie to our kids. I have never told my kids he's real and have taught them the history behind Santa Claus. How St. Nicholas helped children by giving them things they needed. Fruits and nuts are what we fill our stockings with.

 

[Annie]

A couple days late, but thought his very cool:

BLACKFIVE: Help NORAD Track and Protect Santa

In 2005, Brenda Freeman (mother of Eric Freeman) sent me the link to NORAD Tracks Santa! - a Joint military effort (between Canada and America) to track and protect Santa on his flight delivering toys to all of the good little boys and girls.

Here's the details:

In 1955, a Colorado Springs based Sears placed an ad for local kids to "call Santa" on a special hotline that the department store had set up. No one seemed to notice that the hotline's number was misprinted. So instead of calling Sears on Christmas Eve, children all over the Colorado Springs area ended up calling Colonel Harry Shoup, director of operations at NORAD's predecessor CONAD, asking "where's Santa?"​

NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) is responsible for air and space tracking, originally designed as a sophisticated detection system for inbound Soviet ICBMs and nuclear-armed bombers.

Colonel Shoup realized what had happened, and played along. He asked his staff to check their radars to see if there was any indication of Santa moving on a south-ward vector from the North Pole. Thus, a tradition was born.

Every Christmas Eve, NORAD tracks Santa's journey around the world. Volunteers spend Christmas Eve at Cheyenne Mountain answering phone calls from kids all over the globe, while Air Force personnel from Canada and the United states track Santa using four high-tech systems: radar, satellites, Santa Cams and jet fighter aircraft.

According to the Track Santa website, Santa gets a fighter-jet escort upon entering North American airspace:

Canadian NORAD fighter pilots, flying the CF-18, take off out of Newfoundland to intercept and welcome Santa to North America. Then at numerous locations in Canada other CF-18 fighter pilots escort Santa, while in the United States American NORAD fighter pilots in either the F-15 or F-16 get the thrill of flying with Santa and the famous Reindeer Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen and Rudolph. About a dozen NORAD fighters in Canada and the United States are equipped with Santa Cams.​

Have your kids join in the fun folks, this is a very cool program.