Rudolph

My name is Blitzen. Further introduction should not be necessary.

I’m going to tell you the truth about Rudolph. You know; the reindeer with the red nose.

I know you’ve heard of him, but what you think you know about him is mostly wrong.

A public relations company made up the story of Rudolph. Don’t believe all the malarkey about Rudolph saving the day for one minute. Here’s what really happened.

A long time ago, when Santa started making his Christmas deliveries there were only two of us reindeer: Donder and me. Back then, that’s all Santa needed because there weren’t that many children expecting presents. As the number of children increased, the number and size of the presents increased, and Santa had to add reindeer to the team.

By 1823, when Clement Moore wrote his poem about the night before Christmas there were eight of us: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder, and Blitzen. Up until then our identities were pretty secret, but somebody, I suspect a disgruntled elf, fed this guy Clement our names and the rest is history.

As one of Santa’s first reindeer, along with Donder, I got to be last in the harness. Santa lined us up just like Jesus said, “the first shall be last.” Being in the back had a couple advantages for me. First, if I saw the reindeer up ahead were doing well, I could relax a little, and let them do most of the work. Another advantage was the cookies. Santa’s belly wasn’t just full of jelly like Clement said, it was full of cookies the kids left him. Sometimes, when he didn’t eat all the cookies, he’d share them with Donder and me when he got back in the sleigh.

I wish I could say that my relationship with Santa was always as rosy as his cheeks, but it wasn’t. Like every story, this one has two sides. There was a time when he tried to force me to retire. He said I was getting too fat. What did he expect? He was always feeding me cookies!

The thought of retiring sent chills down my spine. You have probably heard the expression “sent out to pasture.” Well, let me tell you, in Tennessee, there’s lots of sunshine and green grass, and it’s not necessarily such a bad thing to be sent out to pasture. At the North Pole, there was no such thing as pasture. What Santa wanted to do was send me out to tundra. I still shiver, just thinking about retiring to the tundra.

There were eight of us when Santa tried to retire me. I felt so let down by him that I tried to get us reindeer to organize and join the Teamsters Union. The union officials weren’t real excited about reindeer joining because back then all the Teamsters locals were either for wagon drivers or stevedores. They weren’t yet diverse, including cooks, bakers, and airline pilots, as they do now. They finally agreed and we set out to form a union for reindeer. We had a union vote that went four in favor of the union and four against. So no union, but it was a wake-up call for Santa and we never heard that “too fat” or “too old” routine from him again.

When the workload picked up Santa added another reindeer, Rudolph. I’ll tell you a few reindeer eyebrows went up on that choice. About the only thing Rudolph had in common with us was his German sounding name. Most of us figured Hollywood had been lobbying Santa for some time to hire someone they could make a big deal about and put lots of money in their pockets.

Santa, great guy that he is, finally caved, and the rest of us just had to deal with it.

When the rest of us joined the team, we kept our mouths shut. We were happy just to have a job. But not Rudolph, it was all about him. He had somebody write a book to tell his side of the story, and the book made the rest of us look like a bunch of bullies.

And have you seen the Rudolph candy? You’d almost think Rudolph was the reason for the season, just like the Easter Bunny is the reason for Easter.

Thinking back, I think he may have been self-conscious about his nose, so he was overcompensating. Yeah, it was big and shiny, but so what? Nobody’s perfect. Before you knew it, Gene Autry, a famous cowboy singer, was singing a song about him. In the song, it sounds like we were always picking on Rudolph.

I’ll admit it is true that we didn’t let him play in any reindeer games. Have you ever seen any reindeer games? They make pro-football seem like a game for sissies. If we’d have let him play, he’d have ended up just a pile of ground venison by the end of the first period. In fact, we didn’t make fun of Rudolph any more than we made fun of each other. We always kidded around, that’s what reindeer do. I mean, there’s a lot of funny stuff that goes on between reindeer. Like the day Prancer showed up in pink tights and a tutu, spinning around like a ballerina. Sure, we kidded him about that. Who wouldn’t?

Clement in his poem described us as eight tiny reindeer. Yeah, I guess tiny compared to Clydesdales, but most of us weighed about 500 pounds. I tell you this because when you weigh 500 pounds, and your name is Cupid, you have to expect some kidding.

So yeah, we’d call Rudolph a clown, we’d squeeze his nose pretending it was the bulb on a bicycle horn, or we’d call him Rudy, he hated when we called him Rudy. But that’s just the way we kidded around. I always thought Rudy needed to lighten up a little.

Rudolph’s version of the guiding Santa story was made up too. Santa has a built-in direction finder that uses the earth’s magnetic field to guide him. Because the earth’s magnetic field is always moving around, Santa developed correction charts to compensate for the constantly moving north pole. He always kept the charts on his desk so he’d know where to find them.

The first year that Rudolph was on the team is the year he takes credit for guiding us. Yeah, we were a little late getting started that year. The problem being that Santa couldn’t find his correction charts. Without those charts Santa was afraid he’d miss some children’s houses. Misplacing the charts might have something to do with Missus Claus cleaning up his office, but Santa doesn’t want anybody talking about that.

Anyway, while Santa and the elves were looking for the charts Rudolph starts telling this tale about how he could lead us ‘cause his nose was so bright. We all laughed, because we thought it was funny, but we didn’t know then how far his tale would go.

It took Santa about an hour to find his charts; all the while Rudolph was adding to his story. By the time he was done, it was like he really believed it.

Once Santa had the charts, he knew our directions perfectly, and we were used to flying in foul weather so it was really no big deal. We arrived at our first stop about an hour late but by the end of the route, we were back on the original schedule.

That’s pretty much the whole story. I just ask you that next time you hear that stupid song you’ll just think about us, and what the real story is. Oh, one more thing, next year, when you’re waiting for Santa and setting out cookies, you can set out some carrots and mushrooms, I’m watching my weight.

As long as you’re all here, I’ll tell you the latest rumor in the reindeer community. Santa is rethinking this whole process and is considering that in a few years all the reindeer will be replaced by Amazon’s drone copters. If that happens I just hope I get to retire in Tennessee, no tundra for me.