Perhaps it is the unquestionable appeal of Rudolph the Red-Nosed reindeer that makes him the most famous or favorite of all Santa’s reindeers. It surely doesn’t seem as easy to come up with a similar catchy description for the others – Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen – as named in the song.
The story of Rudolph glowing red nose made his, first appeared in 1939 when Montgomery Ward’s distributed about 2.4 million booklets with the poem in the form of a story about “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” It was written by Robert L. May, who worked in the store’s advertisement department, to be used to draw in more people into the store. When the booklet was reissued in 1939, sales soared to more than 3.5 million copies. But it was not until a decade later, in 1949, that the story really gained vast fame when Gene Autry sang a musical version of the fable. As a Christmas song, it is second only in popularity to ‘White Christmas.’
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Rudolph, the ninth reindeer whose lighted nose guides Santa’s sleigh through the night, is now identified worldwide as the song has been translated into more than 20 different languages and an animated television movie has also been based on the story. Rudolph and his noticeable nose have also become the subject of jokes and sparked more interest in reindeers which has led to much research into Santa and the flying reindeers who pull his sleigh through the sky.
Along with the catchy rhythm of the lyrics, Rudolph’s story is also appealing because of the moral lessons it contains. As the story goes, Rudolph was shunned by the other reindeers, which laughed and teased him about his bright red nose. But on a foggy night, when Santa must have been afraid that he may not be able to deliver his Christmas gifts around the world, Santa spotted him and kindly asked if he would step to the front as the leader to ‘guide my sleigh tonight.’ His shiny red nose would after all be very useful in illuminating the way, Santa thought. From then on ‘all of the other reindeers loved him,” and rightly predicted that he ‘would go down in history.’
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The question still hovers still of where Rudolph came from. He’s generally looked upon the son of Donner, one of the first eight reindeers. But the Snopes.com site rejects this however, saying that he dwelled in a reindeer village elsewhere and it was there that he was seen by Santa who had already started on his Christmas Eve journey to deliver gifts. And in a more modern evolution of the story according to Wikipedia.com, an animation by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) introduced a son, named Robbie, of Rudolph. That son has now become the tenth reindeer.
It’s also fascinating to note that the idea of Santa’s sleigh being pulled by reindeers was originated in the poem, ‘Twas The Night Before Christmas.’ That poem tells the story of St. Nicholas, who is Santa, calling his eight tiny reindeers by their names, as previously mentioned, just before he came down the chimney of a house to start filling the stockings from a sack full of toys he carried on his back.
photo credit: Ashley Coombs
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