rudolph revealed

By Todd Stadler · Thursday, December 19, 2002 11:30pm

It's generally acknowledged that there is no cheaper form of humor than the line-by-line mockery, and at this economically depressed time, I can afford nothing more. So it is that I present to you Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer revisited. Ho ho ha ha ho!

You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen
Comit and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen

This is some sort of prologue, I suppose. The tone is a bit haughty, as if to say, "Oh, sure, I guess there's these eight reindeer who happen to fly and oh did I mention they've pulled Santa's sleigh for who-knows-how-many years, but what do you care in this cult of personality world we live in? So much for teamwork!"

And hadn't the author heard of the marvelous time-saving device that is the comma? "And" "and" "and"! At least Clement Moore used more than one word to pad his reindeer roll call into meter!

By the way, for those of you who don't know German, donder and blitzen mean "thunder" and "lightning". I bet nobody wanted to be the reindeer flying behind Donder.

Anyhow, I find it peculiar that none of these guys gets referenced by name in the rest of the song. It's as if Chaucer had started his general prologue to the Canterbury Tales with "thar was a Knight, and a Nonne, and a Monk, and a Cooke, and a Squyer, etc., etc." and then went on to tell thirty stories about the village idiot.

But do you recall
The most famous reindeer of all?

I suppose when this song was first penned, that might have been a legitimate question.

Maybe somehow the tale of Rudolph had been lost in the mists of time. Maybe kids in those days just talked in voices dripping with ennui about those eight workaday reindeer with completely uninteresting noses.

But it's all fairly moot now. When you've been in a TV special featuring Burl "Celebrity" Ives, you've been burned into the national consciousness, don't you know.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose

Shiny nose. Red. Got it.

And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows

You know, the author sure is going into an awful lot of detail about the nose. Shiny, red, glows in the dark. Fine. We spent a whole verse talking about the nose. I'm sure it was breathtaking, but let's move on, right?

All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games

Well, it's obvious what's happening here. Rudolph is "poor" and ostracized from the bourgeoisie, who openly mock him in his poverty, denying him access to any form of enjoyment, and, one presumes, the means of production.

And is it any coincidence, then, that Rudolph's nose is red? Do I have to spell it out for you?

Then one foggy Christmas eve
Santa came to say

Oh ho! Who comes along to save our sad prole but a man also bedecked in red and wearing a long beard not unlike economic wunderkind Karl Marx!

This, then, must be some sort of allegory in which the capitalist state is smashed — on a religious holiday, no less, in order to free the people of their mind-numbing mental shackles, eh comrade?

"Rudolph with your nose so bright
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"

I will pause my socialist tirade for a moment to ask why Santa hadn't thought of this before.

Was Rudolph new to town? Had all previous Christmas Eves been nice and clear, obviating the need for a luminescent nose?

Is asking for a logical, cohesive narrative in my festive happy-time tunes too much? No wonder children are so dumb when they are fed tripe like this!

Then how the reindeer loved him
And they shouted out with glee

Okay, now hold the phone here! That's it?

Santa has a little talk with Rudolph, who hasn't even said yes, and now all the reindeer are kissing up to Rudolph? Talk about brown-nosed reindeer!

Clearly, this is meant as a condemnation of capitalist Europe's (the eight reindeer's) nominal acceptance of socialism (that is, Rudolph), cheering it on in public but privately loathing its Johnny-come-tardiness to the world of economic theory.

And just as this song has, from the beginning, eschewed wasting much time on these sycophantic eight, so we should look anywhere besides Europe for true leadership in the world, eh comrade?

"Rudolph the red-nosed reinder
You'll go down in history"

Great, now they're all historians, too. What a disappointing end to a song that had so much allegorical potential to teach us about the evils of capitalism!

And what a disappointing end to this journal entry.