Santa and his reindeer have some company this year: military fighter jets. And that has some people very unhappy, saying it is a thinly veiled marketing video aimed at children.
NORAD is equating jolly old St. Nick and the military in the minds of kids, one psychologist said.
Santa means presents, good times and “everything else that is positive about Christmas,” Allen Kanner, a child and family psychologist, told the Boston Globe. The co-founder of the Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood said the Pentagon has gone too far.
The associate director of the campaign, Josh Golin, goes a step further. He told CNN that it was “a back-door way to market” the military to kids. The Pentagon took this holiday tradition and added “violence and militarism,” he said.
The controversy stems from a teaser video unveiled by the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the joint U.S.-Canada force.
Each Christmas Eve, NORAD volunteers operate Santa Tracker, which has become a beloved holiday tradition in part because it keeps children out of the way while parents are busy doing, well, all that stuff that parents do on Christmas Eve.
I went to the NORAD site and found this…
Do your planes ever intercept Santa?
Over the past 50 years, our fighter jets (F-16s, F-15s, F-22s and CF-18s) have intercepted Santa many, many times. When the jets intercept Santa, they tip their wings to say, “Hello Santa! – NORAD is tracking you again this year!” Santa always waves. He loves to see the pilots!
The site says this has been done for (the past) fifty years…I am not sure the plane(s) mentioned are fifty years old…
I am not understanding the current controversy via “some people” ??
Only a leftist that is aware of, approves of and covers for the growing level of liberal indoctrination within our schools would suspect this would be any form of militaristic brainwashing of kids. As they say, it takes a thief to know one… or suspect one, in this case.
If obama allows the jets to track Santa, I’m guessing he will order them to be unarmed. Wouldn’t want an angry pilot who didn’t get what they wanted last year to shoot him down.
For Santa to deliver all of the toys around the world in one day, he would have to fly faster than the SR-71 Blackbird. This means that he actually have to SLOW DOWN for the jets to fly with him.