Record breaking: NORAD reports record holiday for Santa tracker

Volunteers at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado are doing more than just tracking Santa Claus this Christmas Eve.

According to the Associated Press, volunteers working at NORAD’s Santa Claus tracker reported fielding 4,000 calls an hour Saturday morning, on pace to set a new record.

The NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) Facebook page is also seeing a significant spike in “likes” this year, with more than 840,000 by Saturday morning. Last year, the AP says the page only had 716,000 “likes.”

NORAD has activated its Santa tracker every year since 1955. During that year, the Associated Press says a Colorado Springs paper, where NORAD is based, invited kids to call Santa to track his whereabouts, but mistakenly printed the wrong number. The number sent kids to the Continental Aerospace Defense Command, which is a NORAD predecessor.

According to the AP, officers on duty played along and have since kept the tradition alive.