It’s here folks, the absolute best day of the year — Christmas Eve. Sure we all look forward to Christmas, but for me, there is nothing better than the Eve. Christmas Eve is prettier than any other day, even Christmas; it’s sweeter than any other day, even Christmas, if only because of the anticipation. Anticipation is fun. The anticipation before anything good, sometimes even better than that thing that we are anticipating. Think about it. Think about how much fun it is anticipating what your favorite band’s new album will be like, or for my favorite band, anticipating whether they will stay … a band. We anticipate on Christmas Eve. We anticipate presents, we anticipate the company of loved ones, and when we were kids, we anticipated the arrival of Santa — you know that nervous feeling in the very inside of you that is tinged with happiness?  And everyone seems to join in the spirit, even those people in the most serious of places with the most serious of tasks.

It was 1955 when straight-laced military man Col. Harry Shoup, the operations commander at the NORAD Continental Air Defense Command in Colorado got a call on that special phone line, the one reserved for the President and the highest of military brass, but that call was not from the President nor a general. It was from a five-year-old little girl who asked Col. Shoup if he was one of Santa’s helpers. As the story goes, Sears Roebuck & Co. had placed an advertisement in a Colorado Springs newspaper telling kids to call a phone number so they could talk to Santa, and that number, wrong as it was, happened to be that top-secret  NORAD number. I’m pretty sure in this day and age, the child would have been summarily scolded, the NSA would be doing an investigation on her entire family, Sears & Roebuck would testifying before Congress on how they got the number, but in 1955, Col. Shoup recognized that special anticipation he probably once had himself, and he recognized the obvious truth of Christmas Eve, that simply because of anticipation, we are all Santa’s helpers. He answered the little girl, yes, and realizing how important this all was, he called a local radio station and reported that he was tracking an unidentified flying object through the skies. And by that, Col. Shoup started an annual NORAD tradition, authorized by our government, to track Santa’s Christmas Eve flight throughout the world.

I remember being a kid, and my dad told me about NORAD’s tracker. Last year, I wrote about my personal Christmas Eve memories and how I had my own yearly plans to catch Santa to prove his existence, but I assure you, every word that comes from my father sounds like the truth. My father’s voice is “check one”, if you will, in the column of “Santa is real.” My father’s authority was well-founded because he is tough, way tougher than anyone I have ever known. When I was little, he worked in distant oil fields in Northern Alberta where it was so cold they had to leave the engines of the vehicles running constantly or those engines would instantly freeze. I understood the plug in the engine block of our 1970 Buick La Sabre in the garage; I knew how cold it was in Calgary, so that place my father worked that needed way more than that plug was way colder. He would come home with all of his special clothing well-stowed, and he never, ever complained. All of that was for us, and that serious toughness made his words even more believable.

This work of my father’s got him a lot of business presents too. Before Christmas, presents from every tool company in the world would arrive. My favorite was the Hickory Farms sets. We could have a little from those, but mostly those were for saved for Christmas Eve. While my father was gone a lot doing his work of directing and deciding how people would get the oil out of the ground for the world, he was always home at Christmas. And when he was home, my father would do things with me. He taught me music; we would sit and I would have to identify all of the instruments of the orchestra from the songs he would play. He encouraged reading. He required everyone to have manners and to sit together until everyone was finished eating at the family dinner table. He checked homework. He taught his own studies, identification of rocks, science, how to fix things. He made sure I practiced my guitar. And my father loved Christmas Eve, very much so, teaching me just exactly how to prepare for Santa.

He told me Santa didn’t like cookies. He told me that Santa liked those Hickory Farms cheeses, sausages and the skinny crackers, especially those really good packages that we had been saving. Oh and peanuts with just a few walnuts, with the nutcracker right next to the bowl, Santa liked those too. You see, Santa is a little too heavy, so he doesn’t need any more cookies. I remember not wanting to share this secret about Santa, this advice of my father, our plan to make Santa healthy, with any other of my friends because I wanted Santa to eat all of my snack that I prepared. And not that I actually knew, just based on what my father told me, I was certain that Santa merely picked at the other children’s cookies, while every year, Santa actually ate all of my snack. I was very proud of that, very proud that my hosting skills pleased Santa.

My father was a man of science, and one of those men who can “do,” you know fix things and build things from nothing. At some point, as kids started telling me that Santa wasn’t real, my father told me that NORAD tracked Santa. So just as in his other scientific training, my father first told me what NORAD was, in great detail, much like when I wanted to know at age seven why light comes out of the light switch and I got an explanation about the flow of electrons and that the light switch cuts on and off that flow. This kind of believable explanation of the function of NORAD — the civil defense tracking agency of the United States of America with advanced radar and tracking of all flight, and the fact that NORAD actually tracks Santa, meant Santa is real!

I remember listening to the NORAD updates with my father. He used it to get me to go to sleep because they pretty much say Santa is in Alberta long before Santa actually is. I had to hurry with my Hickory Farm’s plate preparation and get to bed, my father would tell me. Sure I would get up a few times to see if I could see Santa because no daughter of a man of science is going to be without her proof, but never did I doubt. Plus I had proof. I had my father’s voice. I had the fact that Santa ate all of my Hickory Farms snack that my father told me was Santa’s favorite, a secret that apparently only my father knew with every other other kid who didn’t have such a capable father letting them leave cookies. And I had NORAD, irrefutable proof from the United States government, the same government that made rockets that could go to the moon.

This morning, I signed onto my computer to see the story of the first NORAD reports. Instantly, even though I just woke up, I wanted to go to sleep; it’s that memory that Santa is going to be to my Alberta townhouse any minute. Oh, and Hickory Farms? About a week ago, my dad called me. My dad doesn’t call much. He had this very sweet voice, not really able to get the words out, saying “I heard about your little dog,” no sorry because that stuff hits him really hard; that’s the way it is with tough men, words are not easy for them. We talked for a while. I think he was trying to see if I would say thanks for this present he had sent, but I didn’t know about the present. He told me he ordered it on-line. My dad often sends, with the help of his long-time woman friend, a present, usually something Christmas-like, something I’m certain is not of his choosing, like a wreath, candle holders, a set of different flavors of jelly. Over the years, his woman friend has even changed the signature from Love Daddy, to Love Dad and her name, to from Dad and her name, to from my dad’s name and her name. And while the greeting is still that impersonal thing that isn’t the doing of my “Daddy” (the name I still to this day use), the present was of my Daddy’s doing. The present was from Hickory Farms.

I saved my Hickory Farms present too, all of it, no eating of anything at all … until Christmas Eve. And so tonight, as I wait yet another year of less than sufficient funds to actually travel anywhere, I’m going to make Santa his plate of Hickory Farms goodies, and I’ll think of all the truths my father taught me. Sure it might not be the best of times for me, but they aren’t terrible. And that anticipation? That is the spirit of Santa, the spirit that everything we truly want on our list will arrive, and arrive tomorrow. I believe.

 

Story on Canadian news about NORAD’s first reports (fitting that’s it’s a story done in my childhood host country):

http://www.cbc.ca/news/norad-santa-tracker-christmas-tradition-began-with-a-wrong-number-1.2883284