The Washington Post, indefatigable itself, has tracked down the story of the Cold War-era tradition of tracking Santa Claus on his Christmas Eve flight from the North Pole. And it’s found that the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) faithful monitoring of Santa’s flight is the result of a typo in a Sears ad back then.

Sorry, folks, we’d like to be more uplifting, but we wish you a hearty Merry Christmas (!) anyway.