The NORAD-Santa Thing Sounds Like an Urban Legend

I've known of the Norad Tracks Santa thing for decades, probably before I ever heard the term urban legend. But if I were hearing of it today for the first time, I am pretty sure I would conclude "must be a UL". So, mark that down in my UL-detection record as a (fairly rare) false positive.

Of course, even true stories that become legends morph. Per Wikipedia:

Over the following years, the legend of how the annual event originated began to change. By 1961, Shoup's version of the story was that he had not been gruff with the child, but instead had identified himself as Santa Claus when he spoke to the child on the phone. Shoup and his family later modified the story further, adding that the child had dialed the "red telephone"—an impossibility, because the hotline was connected with the Strategic Air Command by an enclosed cable, and no one could dial into from the outside—rather than the regular phone on Shoup's desk, that it was a misprint in an advertisement that led the child to call him rather than the child misdialing the number, and that a flood of calls had come in from children on Christmas Eve 1955 rather than from just one child on November 30.