Reuters

Senior defense officials are defending the decision to have fighter jets escort St. Nick this year on the North American Air Defense Command’s Santa tracker website.

The NORAD website each December posts videos of Santa Claus entering different countries and cities around the world. This year, some of the videos will show fighter planes escorting the sleigh, a decision that has drawn criticism from the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and others.

But a senior defense official traveling this week with Secretary Chuck Hagel as he visited Bahrain said the military escorts for Santa are necessary given “the proliferation of air defense identification zones.”…