Follow NORAD's tracker on its website on Christmas Eve; it is free, available in several languages, and run with a volunteer call centre in the United States. If you are in Rovaniemi on the 24th, decide beforehand how you will explain a Santa who is in his office at the village and on a map over the Pacific at once. One answer that works is that he leaves the office late and makes up the time in the sleigh.
On Christmas Eve millions of children follow Santa across a map. The best-known
map belongs to NORAD, the North American air-defence command, and its story is
worth knowing before you tell it to a child, because the famous version is not
quite what happened.
How it really started
The story usually goes that in 1955 a department-store advertisement printed
the wrong number, and a child calling Santa reached the duty officer at the
air-defence command in Colorado Springs, Colonel Harry Shoup, who played along.
The details are less certain: it is unclear whether the number was misdialled
or misprinted, and the first call came on 30 November, not on Christmas
Eve.1 Shoup became known as the
“Santa Colonel”, and the tradition grew from there.
Tripadvisor ratings, 18 Rovaniemi operators
Highest first
Snowtrail Safaris 5.0
Nordic Odyssey 5.0
Nordic Adventures 4.9
Arctic GM 4.9
Book Lapland 4.9
Bearhill Husky 4.9
Arctic Attitude 4.9
StayLapland 4.8
Wild About Lapland 4.7
Wild Nordic 4.7
Lapland Winter Park 4.6
Safartica 4.5
Nordic Unique Travels 4.5
Apukka Resort 4.4
Lapland Welcome 4.3
Arctic Circle Snowmobile Park 4.3
Arctic Circle Husky Park 4.2
Raitola 3.4
<44.04.55.0
Ratings read from Tripadvisor. The shaded compartment left of the divider holds any score below 4.0. We record the score only; review counts and review text are not part of our comparison.
How to follow it today
The tracker runs on NORAD’s own
website.2 It is available in
several languages and draws millions of visits on Christmas Eve, and a call
centre at a base in Colorado Springs is staffed that night by more than a
thousand military and civilian
volunteers.1
The Rovaniemi puzzle
A family spending Christmas in Rovaniemi meets a small problem the trackers
were not designed for. Santa Claus Office at Santa Claus Village is open on
Christmas Eve, from eight in the morning to eight at night, as
Christmas in Rovaniemi sets out. A child who
met him there in the afternoon may watch him over another continent the same
evening.
It is easy to solve, if you have thought about it before the question comes:
he leaves the office late, and the sleigh is fast. The harder question is the
one behind it, and
how to handle “is Santa real?” is worth
reading if you have a child near the age of doubt.
The line is a United States number, 877-446-6723, and it is a toll-free number inside North America, so calling it from a Finnish mobile is an international call with whatever your operator charges, if it connects at all. The website is the practical way to follow along from Lapland. If a call matters to your child, test the number from your phone before Christmas Eve rather than on the night.
What time should we start watching?
NORAD's tracker follows Santa through the night of 24 December. Check the website on the afternoon of Christmas Eve to see whether tracking has begun, and plan the moment around your children's bedtime rather than around his route, since nobody publishes the route in advance. A tracker that shows him close by is a good way to end the evening.
Is there another tracker?
Yes. Google runs its own Santa Tracker, at santatracker.google.com. We could not read its current details, so we do not describe them here. Either tracker works for a family; choose the one your children find more fun, and stick to one, because two maps showing Santa in slightly different places is a question you may not want to answer.
Lapland Handbook is written by its editorial staff in Rovaniemi. Every price, age limit and group size in a comparison is read from the operator's own page and marked "Not stated" when the operator does not publish it. Each guide names who should not book, and names the operator that suits each kind of group, whichever it is.
Rovaniemi's winter tours do sell out – December and the week around New Year first, and the small-group ones before the rest. Booking here goes straight to the operator at their own published price, and the code LH10 takes 10% off it.
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