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Not grinch at all. Choosing rather to focus on the 'reason for the season' if you will than Santa Claus. As I said, I have no problem with Santa Claus. I have no problem with people believing in Santa Claus. However for the national government to choose to embrace this tradition, up to and including a complete waste of tax dollars for the past 48 years, is a little over the top. Or does NORAD have nothing better to do?

The other issue is that people will readily embrace a man in a suit with 8 flying reindeer and somehow have a problem with saying 'Merry Christmas' because it may offend someone? My point is if the national government is going to celebrate part of the holiday, sponsored through tax dollars, then they should at least celebrate the more important aspects. This would not be establishment of religion, rather it would be focusing on the season as the men who founded this nation would have done

Billbears - I don't know if you went to the website - if not, you probably should. Take a look at the corporations that are running the show. MCI has donated the phonelines, AOL is contributing services, the graphics are done by another company, and so on, and so on. I'm willing to bet that federal outlay - particularily that of NORAD is minimal on this. You could probably request the budgeting for it and the manpower outlay for it as well. If it's military personnel answering the phones, I'm also willing to bet that they are volunteers.

Yeah - I'm defending NORAD - my dad used to work at the Mountain. At around 9:00 PM Christmas Eve, the local stations in Colorado would break in to programming and announce that NORAD was tracking Santa. They'd show some file footage of the interceptors going off, some special effects shot of a radar screen with a red dot on it, and that would be it - time for bed.

Honestly, I doubt NORAD is putting out much money, if any, for this thing.