By now everyone knows that just before Christmas every year, the North American Aerospace Defense Command pretends to be all friendly and “tracks” Santa Claus’ journey around the world for millions of kids. How did that start? Urban legend has it, and Snopes’ investigation confirms* that it began as a PR mistake by a Sears department store.

* and good god, Snopes has a lot of irritating ads now. Can’t we just have nice things?

My favorite part:

"Dad's pretty annoyed," said Terri Van Keuren, Shoup's daughter, recalling the legend of that day in 1955. "He barks into the phone," demanding to know who's calling. "The little voice is now crying," Van Keuren continued. "'Is this one of Santa's elves, then?'"

I’m imagining that conversation was not very kid-friendly.

I think some more investigation is required, though. Being a former devious blue-shirt/cynical employee, the part I find hard to believe isn’t that Sears printed the wrong number. The part I find hard to believe is that it was an accident that Sears printed the wrong number. I’m betting if that phone number was only one number off, then someone at Sears had at some point received a really strange wrong number. And remembered that interesting tidbit of information for later, cackling to themselves and muttering “soon… soon…” while wringing their fingers like Mr. Burns.

And then, the Santa promo. Beautiful.

Of course, probably I’m wrong, and Edward Snowden is shortly going to tell us that it’s an NSA program to gather information on what Americans want for Christmas.