RUDOLPH and Other Christmas Thoughts ~~ Edited and Reprinted from My "David'Z RantZ" Blog, 12/24/2008, and THIS blog, 12/25/2010!!!

I'm not Santy Claus!

You can call me Anti-Claus!

Don't bunch up your panties, 'cause...

I'm not him!

Going quite insane, here.

Love to cause you pain, dear!

What's for breakfast? Reindeer!

(I'm not him.)

I see you when you're sleeping,

I know when you're awake,

I see you when you're naked,

So give that tail a shake!

Lumps of coal to all o'you.

Anti-Claus will follow you,

Eat you up, and swallow you!

I'm not "him!"

Ask for toys, you'll get a slap.

Don't give me that "giving" crap,

And put yo' Mama on my lap!

I'm not him!

Sorry, fellow babies... I decided to post a reaction to those adults -- I'm much nicer to the children, actually! -- who keep telling this white-haired, white-bearded "Silver Fox" that he looks like Santa Claus!

*sigh*

And now, something much cheerier!

"You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen,

Comet and Cupid and Richard M. Nixon..."

Or however that goes...

Of course, I'm talking about "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

A Christmas Classic, right? Sure it is. And that's whether you're referring to the song, or the 1964 Rankin/Bass TV show, or... well... anything else concerning Rudolph.

But one thing about it always bothered me. (And when I say "always," I really mean "whenever I bothered to think about it." I don't mean it kept me up at night, 365 days a year.)

"But do you recall

The most famous reindeer of all?"

Well! I knew that the song pre-dated the TV show by about a zillion years -- okay, okay, more like fifteen -- but how could Rudolph be called "the most famous reindeer of all" in the very song that introduced him, I wondered?!?

That is, assuming that Rudolph was introduced in that song... and not before...

Which I didn't dare assume...

(Gotta love the internet... ! Google to the rescue!)

Huh. Guess what I learned? (And you may already know this, but I didn't, and it's my blog, so... ) He wasn't introduced in the song. He was created about ten years earlier, by a wage-slave who worked for Montgomery Ward. This guy, Robert L. May, was asked to come up with a Christmas story, and that's how Rudolph was "born."

I'm making a long story short, believe it or not. The whole story may be found here.

The best part of the story, in my not-so-humble opinion, is that seven years after creating Rudolph as what would now be called a "work for hire," the debt-ridden May -- whose wife had been dying from cancer at the time of Rudolph's creation, leaving him with tons of medical bills -- "approached Sewell Avery, President of Montgomery Ward and asked for the rights to publish the story commercially."

I know what you're probably thinking: "Yeah, right. Avery probably rattled off that era's equivalent of 'Sucks to be you!' and threw him out of his office!"

Nope! Avery signed the copyright to the character over to May!

Merry Christmas, indeed.

(And it's a damned good thing that May wasn't working in the comic book field, innit?)

So. I was wrong. First time that's ever happened.

Well, second, maybe...

Anyway, by the time Johhny Marks (May's brother-in-law, as it turned out) wrote the song and got Gene Autry to sing it, Montgomery Ward had already distributed about 6 million booklets, May himself had sold quite a few, and there was even a theatrically-released, short cartoon version. So, by the time the song was written, Rudolph could very well lay claim to being "the most famous reindeer of all."

But something about that blasted song still bothers me:

"But do you recall

The most famous reindeer of all?"

It's still a dumb question, but for another reason, unrelated to the actual origin of the character.

It starts by assuming that you know Dasher, Dancer, and the other six, and then asks if you recall the most famous one.

Well, duh! Wouldn't you?!?

That's like saying, "Okay, you know about Franklin Pierce, Martin Van Buren, and Millard Fillmore... but do you recall George Washington?"

Who the hell wouldn't?

Sure, it's a silly little quibble with a time-honored song...

But...

I'll bet you're going to think of it every time you hear "Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer" from now on, eh?

And if so? Then my job is done.

So there.

I'm the one on the right. On the right, I said!

Last but not least, I want to give you a link to an absolutely terrific Christmas story. I occasionally mention Mark Evanier's newsfromme blog on my own blog. I read Mark's blog as often as possible -- I always catch up on reading any posts I've missed -- and I've even been mentioned by name on it, two or three times! Well, here is the latest re-posting of Mark's most popular post ever. Click on the link and you'll see why.

Thanks for your time... and Happy Krimble. "See" you sometime after the Christmas holiday!