Pull up an ice block and lend an ear, children. It’s time to acquaint you with the tale of Rudolph, for the 40th time.
I think, by now, we all recall the most famous reindeer of all. “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” first debuted on CBS in 1964 and it has been an annual favorite ever since. It’s certainly one of my favorites, far superior to most of the holiday-themed shows produced since for one very important reason.
It’s not sappy. In fact it rings very true to life in many ways, once you get past the pointy ears.
A sizeable percentage of the cast seems grouchy. We don’t get a wealth of happy, productive, sensitive people with one lone, disgruntled, easily identifiable villain like in most children’s shows. Instead we get a grumpy Santa whose wife is nagging him to eat more – despite the attendant health risks and increased chances of heart disease. We get crowds of reindeer and elves clearly demonstrating that mob opinion is generally against the different and the strange. We get parents ashamed of their child, a boss ashamed of his employee, and a whole island of toys abandoned because they didn’t match the catalog pictures.
I don’t know about you, but toss in credit card bills, comments about my weight, relatives not talking to other relatives and at least one fistfight over the turkey stuffing and you’ve just described my holiday celebrations perfectly. I empathize with this show.
I learned many things from watching Rudolph over and over — useful real world lessons — and here are just a few.
The best Christmas stories are slightly terrifying. Those creepy little puppets affected me deeply, driving home the importance of embracing diversity while at the same time giving me nightmares about my toys lurching out of the closet while I slept and attacking me in jerky, stop-action movements. Not a lesson I’ll forget in a hurry!
I also panicked at the end when the swimming bird was hurled out of Santa’s sleigh without a parachute, even though we’d been shown earlier that he couldn’t fly. Now that I’m grown up I’m able to perceive more levels of meaning, and so I recognize it as cynical black humor.
Facial mudpacks don’t make you look prettier, especially if you keep picking at them with your hoof.
“Reindeer Games” is a terrible name for a movie. Ben Affleck, take note.
Always befriend bewhiskered strangers carrying (and licking) pickaxes.
Sometimes people can look completely normal and yet have mysterious problems. As a child I never understood why Dolly, a toy with no obvious defects or dysfunction, was on the Island of Misfit Toys. Now that I’ve been in the dating scene and met more people, I’m guessing she was Baker Acted.
Dentists rule.
Stories of hazing and cruelty are way more entertaining when read by Burl Ives.
And, most importantly, never, ever discriminate against someone with a physical deformity if there’s the chance they can do something really cool with it that you can then exploit for your own needs.
I’m not saying Rudolph’s story was perfect, there were a few false notes. I’m more prepared to believe in the existence of Abominable Snowmonsters than that cute does like Clarice go for the sweet, sensitive outcasts, for example. In my experience they go for the sports heroes and unwashed rock stars, but then again, I don’t have a glowing nose.
And I’m a little bothered by the evident flimsiness of Christmas, as displayed in this and nearly every other holiday special I’ve ever seen. It seems that almost anything can threaten this holiday, making me wonder if Santa should maybe invest in some redundancy systems and failsafe switchovers that would reroute the presents through FedEx in case of dangerously low levels of air traffic visibility, merriness, snow, spirit of giving, dependable transportation, believing children, Christmas cheer, or empowered workforce.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer serves as an excellent documentary of what things were like before the Americans with Disabilities Act, what with the forced labor and singing and everything, and I treasure it every year as an example of how to take unfair situations into your own hands… er, hooves.
Today Rudolph and Hermey would simply file a class action lawsuit on behalf of all employees of Kringle Consolidated forced to endure a hostile workplace environment due to occupational preference, alternate recreational lifestyle, rhinobioluminescence, and lack of comprehensive dental. Then the children of the world would once again miss Christmas, and possibly Hanukkah and Kwanzaa as interested parties. But Rudolph was born in the last year of the baby boomer generation. That kind of civil rights activism just doesn’t happen anymore.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you’ll go down in litigative history