It's Christmas Eve, which means that Santa is coming to town. Before he gets to your house, you can keep up with St. Nick on his one-day trip around the world by going to NORADSanta.

For the last 60 years, the military's North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, at Peterson Air Force Base has been tracking Santa Claus, as he travels around the globe delivering millions of Christmas gifts.

The staff at NORAD use cutting edge technology to allow children to see exactly where jolly old St. Nick is on Christmas Eve. Volunteers at the military command post also take calls to give children real-time updates about Santa's progress. Last year, NORAD employees received 135,000 calls over 23 hours from 234 countries.

NORAD's Santa tracking tradition began in 1955, when a Sears Roebuck & Co. in Colorado Springs misprinted the telephone number for children to call Santa in their ad. Rather than listing the number for Sears' Santa hotline, children trying to reach Santa ended up calling the U.S. Continental Air Defense Command.

When Col. Harry Shoup, the director of the Operations department for the air defense center -- now known as NORAD -- began receiving calls from kids asking to speak with Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, he instructed his staff to check the radar for signs of Santa. Shoup and his team spent the entire night fielding calls and giving kids details about Santa's location, as he and his reindeer flew through the sky.

Shoup then decided to keep the practice going every single year. The practice continued until it was taken over in 1958 by NORAD, the bi-national air defense command for North America, which is run by the governments of Canada and the United States. The rest is history.