DEBORAH CROMBIE: Since I was small, my idea of the perfect Christmas Eve has included stockings hung by the fire, with milk and cookies set out for the big guy in the red suit. As you get older, it only gets better, because YOU get to drink the milk and eat the cookies. (Although of course there were the "putting toys together in the wee hours years," when that glass of milk needed a tot of whiskey to see you through the Chinese instructions.)
But as a child, oh, the excitement, the anticipation of it all, aided by watching Santa's flight across the globe on NORAD's Santa Tracker, which was kindly brought to you by your local TV station in the commercial breaks.
NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been tracking Santa since 1955, when a misprinted phone number in a Sears ad confused NORAD's number with Santa's workshop. A quick thinking Air Force colonel began offering updates on Santa's progress whenever a child called the number, and a tradition was born.
But since 2012, Google and NORAD have gone head-to-head with competing Santa Trackers, and they don't agree! If Google shows Santa in Thailand, why does NORAD say he's in Russia? Ditto on the number of gifts delivered! How can one site say millions of toys while the other says billions? (That's like government budget numbers... You can't wrap your brain around them.)
Of course there are lots of complicated technological explanations, but it boils down to this: Santa is magic, and can therefore be in two places at once. How else would he deliver all those toys in twenty-four hours?
As for the difference in the number of gifts, I suspect it's because NORAD's radar can track very tiny objects, while Google's location data is not quite as accurate. That's what I'm going with anyway.
But which tracker to use?
I'm leaning towards NORAD, for sentimental reasons. On the other hand, you can Chromecast the Google Santa Tracker from your phone to your TV, so maybe I'll give that a try. The wonders of modern technology!
Meanwhile, I'm going to curl up in front of that fire (or at least the idea of a fire, since we are unseasonably warm here) with my hot drink, and unless I can twist my husband's arm into watching LOVE ACTUALLY one more time, catch up on some of that Christmas reading I've been promising myself.
How about you, REDs and readers? What's your perfect Christmas Eve?
