Origin Stories: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Belfast, ME
Growing up, Christmas time was always celebrated by a warm cup of hot chocolate and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer playing on the television. After years of Grinch and A Christmas Carol remakes, I think it’s telling that the original stop-motion animated Christmas classic remains one of the most well-known and beloved seasonal films. The movie initially came out in 1964 and became the longest-running Christmas television special. The famous song was around even longer, topping the charts in 1949. But as for the story, well it came as a surprise that Rudolph was born from a marketing campaign a decade prior.
Montgomery Ward, a retail and catalog company, had been buying and giving away coloring books every Christmas. In an effort to cut costs, the company asked Robert L. May in early 1939 to create an original character for that year’s print. May was having an existential crisis at the start of the new year; at nearly 35, he was heavily in debt, writing about men’s t-shirts instead of the next great American novel, and his wife was terminally ill.
As the fog rolled in on another dreary day, May gazed out his window to see the distant lights shining through the mist. Thus, Rudolph was born. May got to work developing his new character, taking inspiration from his own childhood and stories like the Ugly Duckling as he crafted another one of Santa’s famous reindeer around a strange but bright nose. Something that made the reindeer an outcast would become his greatest strength.
The 1820s poem, “A visit from Saint Nicholas” named all of Santa’s eight reindeer, and May needed to make sure that his reindeer had just as memorable a name. Knowing he wanted a name that started with the letter “R,” May experimented with a few names, including Rollo and Rodney, before landing on Rudolph.
May pitched Rudolph to the company and the character’s iconic red nose was almost cut for its connotations to alcoholism, but ultimately, Rudolph’s nose and story made it to print that Christmas. 2.4 million soft-covered booklets were distributed for free by Montgomery Ward and the new Christmas tale was an immediate success. Maxton Publishing Co. would later pick up the story to print millions more copies in hardcover. Ten years later, Montgomery Ward relinquished the story’s rights to May, and his brother-in-law Johnny Marks would pen the famous song that Gene Autry still sings on our radio waves today.
May died in 1976, far from the debt he experienced in his early 30s, and although Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer wasn’t the next big American novel, there’s no doubt that it is a universally beloved Christmas story.