Tag Archives: Santa Claus

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See? NORAD is still a viable agency

To those who think the end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union rendered the North American Air Defense Command irrelevant … I’ve got a flash for you.

It’s tracking Santa Claus as I write these words.

The time is about 10:15 p.m. Central Standard Time and Santa is somewhere en route to wherever he intends to go. NORAD is on him.

A Facebook friend noted — incorrectly, I must stipulate — that the now-infamous National Security Agency is tracking. However, a FB friend of his set him straight, that it’s NORAD doing the tracking. My friend’s watchdog said the NSA is checking off Santa’s “naughty list.”

The NORAD tracking is an annual rite of Christmas. The agency puts out “intelligence reports” on Santa’s flight plan from the North Pole. These are highly declassified, as NORAD tends to give up Santa’s location at almost any given moment.

He gets to his destination — wherever it is — right on time every Christmas. That makes it one of humankind’s most enduring mysteries. How does the Jolly Old Man do it?

Bigfoot? The Loch Ness monster? Area 51? Who shot JR? Forget about them.

Santa’s on-time record is spotless. He might not grant every single child on Earth his or her Christmas wish, but he cannot be faulted for trying.

And NORAD is on his tail every mile of his journey.

I’m glad these folks are still on the job.

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Christmas is time to suspend barbs

Let’s agree to suspend the barbs until after Christmas.

However, allow me this brief observation — sans criticism — regarding the ethnicity of Jesus Christ and Santa Claus.

The issue surfaced when Fox News talking head Megyn Kelly posited the notion that both Santa Claus and Jesus were white. My first thought: Who cares? My second thought: Why is Kelly even going there?

I have no answer to Thought No. 1. I frankly don’t care about Santa’s ethnicity, other than to remind Kelly and others who do care that the jolly old man — don’t let your kids read this — is a fictional character based vaguely on an actual man. Santa Claus is whatever we want him to be in our household. That’s the beauty of Santa. As Francis Pharcellus Church wrote in that wonderful editorial to Virginia O’Hanlon in the late 19th century, he exists in our hearts.

The stuff about Jesus, though, is a bit more substantial. Anthropologists looking for clues to Jesus’s appearance generally have concluded he was a dark-skinned man who looked very much the way men do in the Middle East. Having spent some time in Israel — five weeks in May-June 2009 — I can say without a doubt that the vast majority of Palestinians and others of Arabic descent have roughly the same look.

Israelis who descended from European immigrants are another matter. Some are blue-eyed blondes, some have dark hair and eyes, others have features in the middle.

And why did Kelly venture this notion — from which she retreated a little — that Santa Claus and Jesus are white men?

One word: ratings.