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You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? I'm willing to bet you do but let's run through the first eight runner ups first.

That famous Johnny Marks song rips the names of Santa's reindeer straight from Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem, A Visit From St. Nicholas, which describes Santa's flying sleigh as being pulled by “eight tiny reindeer”. Though this is widely cited as the origin of Santa's reindeer in general, the concept was actually introduced in a poem published anonymously in 1821 titled Old Santeclaus with Much Delight, though here there's only one steed and it goes unnamed. The exact number of deer in Santa's herd has actually waxed and waned over the years. For example, Lyman Frank Baum, author of the original Wizard of Oz, published a children's book titled The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus in 1902. His list extended the roster to ten reindeer named Flossie, Glossie, Racer, Pacer, Reckless, Speckless, Fearless, Peerless, Ready and Steady. Given how I (and probably you) have only ever even heard of this list in articles on “fun facts about Santa's reindeer bwjvlebcuskdk”, it's safe to say this one never caught on against the classic Moore reindeer.

You'll notice, however, that neither of these lists include a “Rudolph”, so what's the deal with “the most famous reindeer of all” then? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is the OC of one Robert L. May, a retail worker employed by Montgomery Ward. In 1939, Montgomery Ward assigned May to draft up a short Christmas story for their yearly coloring book. Like all retail workers, May was living an absolutely miserable life: crippled by debt at age 35 and struggling to cope with his beloved wife's fatal cancer diagnosis, but (also like all retail workers) he bit his tongue and sulked through his work anyways. Taking inspiration from his own childhood isolation, and staring out at an ever-foggy Chicago winter, May came up with the idea for a reindeer named Rudolph who was born with a red nose so shiny you'd even say it glows. Of course, being different immediately attracts the attention of little punks and bullies who ostracize Rudolph from their society. Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?” Then all the reindeer magically welcome him back into their society, because obviously the only way to find true acceptance is to make your malformity useful to the yearly cult of consumer capitalism.

Okay I jest, that's clearly not meant to be the moral of the story. In fact, Rudolph's acceptance back into the herd at the end of the tale sort of reflects the rest of May's story as well. Montgomery Ward gave him the rights to the story in 1947, freeing him up to go to his brother-in-law, the aforementioned Johnny Marks, to get some lyrics written for a little diddy based on Rudolph. In 1949, they got Gene Autry to sing it for them, and this rendition is still by far the one you're most likely to hear on the radio. The song became such a hit that it was picked up by NBC and General Electric to be adapted into the famous stop-motion film of 1964, which has since become such a holiday staple that I still find myself watching it… alone… in my room… as a grown ass woman… I told you the life of a retail worker is miserable.

But, be that as it may, the success of Rudolph at least allowed Robert L. May to claw his way out of his hole. The royalties he received for the Rudolph brand gave him enough money to get out of debt and send all of his children to university. He passed away in 1976, content with his little splash in the historical record. Sure, it wasn't the great American novel he'd hoped to become famous for in his younger years, but it was more than most of us can hope to leave behind. I respect that, and I hope that in sharing his story in my own little corner of a vanishing historical record, that shy little boy, whom they laughed at and called names, will continue to go down in history.

Design notes, did I hyperfocus on Rudolph just to avoid drawing eight individual reindeer? Yes, yes I did. That's a project for future Ava to deal with. It's okay, I always dump my problems onto her, bitch is used to it by now. Putting off the consequences of my procrastination aside, coming up with a “uniform” for Santa's reindeer ended up being a bit more of a challenge than I initially imagined. There is such a thing as domestic reindeer (Arctic peoples even use them to pull sleighs), but the harnesses (that I looked at least) weren't all that creative. I ended up leaning more on draft horse equipment and Kentucky Derby prizes instead, which I think still came out looking rather spiffy. Of course, the big thing about Rudolph specifically is his shiny red nose, and boy did I go down a completely asinine rabbit hole for this. Like sometimes I think I just have to accept a simple prompt like “reindeer with glowing schnoz” and not try to extrapolate too much. No one would mind, I mean in real life reindeer neither have lightbulbs for noses or the ability of flight anyway, so it's not like it'd be that important to overthink. Overthink I did, though, so sit your asses down and suffer through my Always Sunny corkboard rant.

Growing up, the thing about Rudolph's nose that always confused me was not its light but its sound. In the stop motion film, every time his nose starts up, it's accompanied by this loud high-pitched shrieking which honestly seems to be what's really offensive to the rest of the reindeer characters. Like that's what they viscerally react to and the light is just a side annoyance. I never understood what the hell that was supposed to be about until I rewatched it again for this blurb and only now at age 24 do I get that oh duh, obviously, it's meant to sound like a steaming kettle. That got my gears turning a bit, because it implies that the glow is heat-activated. So I tried looking up if any animals have bioluminescence triggered by some sort of internal heat, but came up short. Apparently though, bioluminescence in general is the result of a class of chemicals called luciferins getting oxidized by another concoction called luciferase. Now I'm not a chemist, like at all, so my logic is probably bunk, but in my cavewoman brain I think “oh well blood have oxygen, maybe blood can act as catalyst somehow”, and so I like the idea that Rudolph just has these unusually massive blood vessels in his snout that he can force blood into, which in turn activates the luciferin in his nasal cavity and also emits a huge amount of kettle-esk steam from his nostrils as all that blood-hot air gets exhaled. Boom, red glow and kettle noise.

Speaking of red, though, one cavity of this rabbit hole I went down revealed that red is actually an extremely rare color in bioluminescent animals. This is because red is of course the weakest wavelength of light, so it actually wouldn't be especially great for lighting Santa's way (though as I shone a white flashlight through my hand as a color reference, it occurred to me that, if emitted from inside his nose, Rudolph's glow could actually be a more common white or yellow and the red is just the result of the light shining through his nose flesh). A lot of animals aren't even equipped to see red at all, including most mammals. However, it turns out there are actually some critters who have taken advantage of this exact conundrum. Animals that do glow red like the stoplight loosejaw and the railroad worm have adapted this trait specifically because it affords them their own private wavelength to search around undetected by the other more insufficient eyeballs around them. They've even co-opted a form of chlorophyll to help their eyes reabsorb their red light in clearer definition, so hey maybe Rudolph's abominable-snowman-attracting honker isn't as much of a beacon as it's portrayed in the film. Or maybe I've been thinking way too hard about a magical flying talking reindeer and I really need to go to bed-

Description
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, but do you recall the most famous reindeer of all? I'm willing to bet you do but let's run through the first eight runner ups first.

That famous Johnny Marks song rips the names of Santa's reindeer straight from Clement Clarke Moore's 1823 poem, A Visit From St. Nicholas, which describes Santa's flying sleigh as being pulled by “eight tiny reindeer”. Though this is widely cited as the origin of Santa's reindeer in general, the concept was actually introduced in a poem published anonymously in 1821 titled Old Santeclaus with Much Delight, though here there's only one steed and it goes unnamed. The exact number of deer in Santa's herd has actually waxed and waned over the years. For example, Lyman Frank Baum, author of the original Wizard of Oz, published a children's book titled The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus in 1902. His list extended the roster to ten reindeer named Flossie, Glossie, Racer, Pacer, Reckless, Speckless, Fearless, Peerless, Ready and Steady. Given how I (and probably you) have only ever even heard of this list in articles on “fun facts about Santa's reindeer bwjvlebcuskdk”, it's safe to say this one never caught on against the classic Moore reindeer.

You'll notice, however, that neither of these lists include a “Rudolph”, so what's the deal with “the most famous reindeer of all” then? Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is the OC of one Robert L. May, a retail worker employed by Montgomery Ward. In 1939, Montgomery Ward assigned May to draft up a short Christmas story for their yearly coloring book. Like all retail workers, May was living an absolutely miserable life: crippled by debt at age 35 and struggling to cope with his beloved wife's fatal cancer diagnosis, but (also like all retail workers) he bit his tongue and sulked through his work anyways. Taking inspiration from his own childhood isolation, and staring out at an ever-foggy Chicago winter, May came up with the idea for a reindeer named Rudolph who was born with a red nose so shiny you'd even say it glows. Of course, being different immediately attracts the attention of little punks and bullies who ostracize Rudolph from their society. Then one foggy Christmas Eve, Santa came to say “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?” Then all the reindeer magically welcome him back into their society, because obviously the only way to find true acceptance is to make your malformity useful to the yearly cult of consumer capitalism.

Okay I jest, that's clearly not meant to be the moral of the story. In fact, Rudolph's acceptance back into the herd at the end of the tale sort of reflects the rest of May's story as well. Montgomery Ward gave him the rights to the story in 1947, freeing him up to go to his brother-in-law, the aforementioned Johnny Marks, to get some lyrics written for a little diddy based on Rudolph. In 1949, they got Gene Autry to sing it for them, and this rendition is still by far the one you're most likely to hear on the radio. The song became such a hit that it was picked up by NBC and General Electric to be adapted into the famous stop-motion film of 1964, which has since become such a holiday staple that I still find myself watching it… alone… in my room… as a grown ass woman… I told you the life of a retail worker is miserable.

But, be that as it may, the success of Rudolph at least allowed Robert L. May to claw his way out of his hole. The royalties he received for the Rudolph brand gave him enough money to get out of debt and send all of his children to university. He passed away in 1976, content with his little splash in the historical record. Sure, it wasn't the great American novel he'd hoped to become famous for in his younger years, but it was more than most of us can hope to leave behind. I respect that, and I hope that in sharing his story in my own little corner of a vanishing historical record, that shy little boy, whom they laughed at and called names, will continue to go down in history.

Design notes, did I hyperfocus on Rudolph just to avoid drawing eight individual reindeer? Yes, yes I did. That's a project for future Ava to deal with. It's okay, I always dump my problems onto her, bitch is used to it by now. Putting off the consequences of my procrastination aside, coming up with a “uniform” for Santa's reindeer ended up being a bit more of a challenge than I initially imagined. There is such a thing as domestic reindeer (Arctic peoples even use them to pull sleighs), but the harnesses (that I looked at least) weren't all that creative. I ended up leaning more on draft horse equipment and Kentucky Derby prizes instead, which I think still came out looking rather spiffy. Of course, the big thing about Rudolph specifically is his shiny red nose, and boy did I go down a completely asinine rabbit hole for this. Like sometimes I think I just have to accept a simple prompt like “reindeer with glowing schnoz” and not try to extrapolate too much. No one would mind, I mean in real life reindeer neither have lightbulbs for noses or the ability of flight anyway, so it's not like it'd be that important to overthink. Overthink I did, though, so sit your asses down and suffer through my Always Sunny corkboard rant.

Growing up, the thing about Rudolph's nose that always confused me was not its light but its sound. In the stop motion film, every time his nose starts up, it's accompanied by this loud high-pitched shrieking which honestly seems to be what's really offensive to the rest of the reindeer characters. Like that's what they viscerally react to and the light is just a side annoyance. I never understood what the hell that was supposed to be about until I rewatched it again for this blurb and only now at age 24 do I get that oh duh, obviously, it's meant to sound like a steaming kettle. That got my gears turning a bit, because it implies that the glow is heat-activated. So I tried looking up if any animals have bioluminescence triggered by some sort of internal heat, but came up short. Apparently though, bioluminescence in general is the result of a class of chemicals called luciferins getting oxidized by another concoction called luciferase. Now I'm not a chemist, like at all, so my logic is probably bunk, but in my cavewoman brain I think “oh well blood have oxygen, maybe blood can act as catalyst somehow”, and so I like the idea that Rudolph just has these unusually massive blood vessels in his snout that he can force blood into, which in turn activates the luciferin in his nasal cavity and also emits a huge amount of kettle-esk steam from his nostrils as all that blood-hot air gets exhaled. Boom, red glow and kettle noise.

Speaking of red, though, one cavity of this rabbit hole I went down revealed that red is actually an extremely rare color in bioluminescent animals. This is because red is of course the weakest wavelength of light, so it actually wouldn't be especially great for lighting Santa's way (though as I shone a white flashlight through my hand as a color reference, it occurred to me that, if emitted from inside his nose, Rudolph's glow could actually be a more common white or yellow and the red is just the result of the light shining through his nose flesh). A lot of animals aren't even equipped to see red at all, including most mammals. However, it turns out there are actually some critters who have taken advantage of this exact conundrum. Animals that do glow red like the stoplight loosejaw and the railroad worm have adapted this trait specifically because it affords them their own private wavelength to search around undetected by the other more insufficient eyeballs around them. They've even co-opted a form of chlorophyll to help their eyes reabsorb their red light in clearer definition, so hey maybe Rudolph's abominable-snowman-attracting honker isn't as much of a beacon as it's portrayed in the film. Or maybe I've been thinking way too hard about a magical flying talking reindeer and I really need to go to bed-