Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a song almost as likely to be heard as I’m dreaming of a White Christmas. Like all songs it has a little story and some trivia associated with it. Here is the modern story, and we’ll try and pull in some ancient stuff at the end to connect Rudolph with the far past.

Rudolph was not one of the reindeer mentioned in Clement Moore’s poem. All the other eight had names, and some people I know can name them all, and do. But Rudolph is the afterthought. Note that it's a guy reindeer name. That will cause interest later.

The first Rudolph was not the subject of a song. A man named Robert May was a copywriter for Montgomery Wards department store…do you remember Montgomery Wards? Every Christmas the store used to buy Christmas style coloring books for kids and give them away as a promotion. Some executive or other figured out that if they produced their own book it would cost them less, so in 1939 Mr. May was asked to come up with a Christmas story that could be given away as a promotion.

May was well known for his fun limericks and knack of writing for children, and set to work. As a child he had been small, shy and of a pretty slender build. So of course, in the land of bigger is better, and playground bullies create the future of the country, he had been bullied, and was not accepted by the other children. He decided to write a story about a reindeer who was ostracized for being different, un-American so to speak, in the reindeer world. He wanted a name that went with red-nosed and reindeer. Reginald was far too British, and Rollo was far too happy, so he settled on Rudolph.

Knowing how children love rhymey dimey stuff he wrote the story in rhyming couplets and tested the whole thing out on his 4 year old daughter Barbara. It gained Barbara’s approval, but May’s boss was as paranoid as only an executive can be, and balked at the idea of a reindeer with a red nose. A red nose in his world meant a drunk of some kind, and that would be a no-no as a promotion.

May took a friend from the Art Department to Lincoln Park Zoo and he sketched some of the deer family there. A sketch of a red nosed reindeer there quelled the fears of his boss and the book was produced. Biologically speaking, a red nosed deer probably has specific parasites. We won’t go into that. But there are such things as red nosed reindeer.

In 1939 Montgomery Ward gave away 2.4 million copies of the book, and even with the wartime shortage of paper some 6 million copies had been given away by 1946.
After the War a whole slew of companies wanted to buy the licensing rights to make Rudolph paraphernalia. May received no benefit from this at all because he was a mere smear employee of the company, therefore they owned the copyright and he didn’t receive any royalties.

While rivers of money were flowing out of the reach of the man who made it possible, his wife died, leaving May deeply in debt from medical bills. Some things haven’t changed. May however managed to persuade the corporate president of Montgomery Ward to give him the copyright rights to the book. This ensured May’s financial future, though without his wife.

He had a brother in law named Johnny Marks and Johnny created lyrics and melody for a slightly altered version of the Rudolph story. Quite a few fearful and politically correct music publishers turned him down because interfering with the Santa story was like meddling with scripture, and that hadn’t been done to the public knowledge at least, for quite a while.

Eventually the singing cowboy Gene Autry recorded it in 1949 and sold two million copies that year. The amount of money involved made it clear that there was absolutely nothing wrong with messing with the Santa story, and the song became second only to White Christmas.

The Robert May story is different from the song story. Rudolph was not one of Santa’s reindeer, and he didn’t live with Santa at the North Pole. Rudolph lived in a typical reindeer village and Santa discovered him by accident while delivering presents in the fog. He noticed the red glow coming from Rudolph’s house and asked him to lead the team because the fog was making things difficult and some accidents had already occurred.

Now it is probably also politically incorrect to point out that Santa’s reindeer, like all the others were probably fond of human urine, so I won’t do it. Forget I said anything about it. But the reindeer of the Laplanders are used to pull loads on sleighs, and in winter it isn’t the male reindeer that have the strength to do this.

Reindeer are the only species of deer in which BOTH sexes have antlers. Males use their antlers to fight other males to get the girls. By winter they’ve done what they had to do and have shed their antlers. They are too exhausted for hard work. But the females don’t shed their antlers until the spring. They need them to clear away snow from plants and to protect their young from predatory animals. Therefore, ALL the reindeer in Santa’s team must be female!

“Once again,” as Patrick Harding said in Christmas Unwrapped “it’s the women who do most of the work at Christmas.” The comment of a well known feminist was that only girl reindeer could pull a fat old man all over the world at night and not get lost. Probably her point.

The ingenious Laps get over the exhausted, can’t work, males problem, by castrating some of them. These don’t lose their antlers at the same time as the unfixed males and still have the energy to pull the sleighs and even take part in reindeer races. So, to amplify the previous comments, ALL the reindeer in Santa’s team must be either females or castrated males. A mixture of both would probably cause problems. Choose your version. The names may give you a clue. Maybe another reason Rudolph was laughed at by the others.

So now we’ve woven a little net connecting all sorts of things about the current Christmas stories and songs. The reindeer, shaman, mushroom, birch tree connections deal with the traditional reindeer. But how can we plug Rudolph into the picture so that he is more of a traditional thing than a pop music item? This problem did bug me until very recently.

As a relief from toiling away at a keyboard I sometimes relax by doing Latin crossword puzzles. The classical scholars who make these up show amazing ingenuity. You stagger through a difficult puzzle and then find that you can fill in another puzzle from the answers to the first by reading down the puzzle and writing down the words you get that way, or reading the top line left to right and the second right to left and so on. One such puzzle solved my problem and got Randolph where I wanted him…right up there with the god who was communicated with using the reindeer’s favorite mushroom, long ago in Ancient Rome.

Here is Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in Latin, which makes it traditional and serious of course. Under it is the literal translation. The major god of the Romans was Jupiter, or Jove, and he is the one who asks Rudolph…Rufe, to lead the team. It fits the tune perfectly. Terminal e sounds like a short eh sound. Check out Latin Crosswords by Peter Jones and David Dare-Plumpton if you are interested. A literal translation follows the poem.

Here’s a literal translation.
1. Rufus, the nosy reindeer, Your nose stands out red. Indeed, if I tell the truth, Your nose is on fire.
2. All reindeer to a deer Hurt him with their laughter. To miserable Rufus never Did they grant (permission) to play with them.
3. On a cloudy evening Jupiter came: “Rufus, with the glowing face, Surely you will pull Jove?”
4. Now they all love him. Listen how they shout: “Rufus, nosy reindeer, Everyone will remember you!”

Next time someone asks for that carol in Latin, expecting Adeste Fideles, surprise the heck out of them. We’ve seen how the stories have mutated over the centuries. That process hasn't stopped simply because not too much has changed in your short life. You might like to reflect on the possible shape of the Christmas story and its associated paraphernalia in another thousand years, should the current crop of humans survive the coming change of consciousness.

Will a brown skinned Santananda Clausiji in a golden chariot drawn by (extinct) tigers come down the rainbow to bring synthetic jewels and gifts from the gods to good boys and girls…if we can still tell the difference then?

A cartoon in the Sunday Star today illustrated the possibility that in a far future story Rudolph may become a great hero. The other reindeer used to treat Rudolph as a mutant because of his red nose. But Santa knew the truth of the old prophecy, that all the reindeer were in fact just part of a computer generated reality and that Rudolph was the ONE who could break the Matrix and bring Christmas back to the people. He broke Rudolph free from the snow dome and trained him to defeat the agents of the Matrix. The rest of the story we know.

We know how one story leads to another now. The possibilities are endless, and some of them will happen. The current situation may change quite soon anyway when the birth rate situation in Europe makes it clear that the vast majority of world Catholics are on the American continent. Maybe then the center of the religion will move from the decaying Rome of celibate, sour puss, pedophilic, status crazy priests to a new, vibrant base in Indian Mary worshipping Guadalupe, filled with happy, laughing, loving real people. A change I would welcome greatly. Interesting times ahead for sure anyhow, as the Chinese curse says.

Light and love this Christmas, Yule, Kwanza, Mid-Winter feast or whatever. Rejoice that afterwards the light begins to win the fight over the dark and that Spring is on the way. Hope you enjoyed this trip through history, geography and religion. EVERYTHING is interesting if you give it your close attention. Almost certainly it will turn out NOT to be politically correct of course. Truth is often inconvenient we are told. Happy trails for 2008.