Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer: A Sociological Dissemination
I feel it is my duty to call attention to the most famous reindeer of all, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. Rudolph is the subject of a song I heard this morning and know by heart, since I learned it approximately 5,000 years ago.
Like most people, I don’t listen to Christmas songs except at Christmas, and then only because the radio spouts the same songs 250,398 and 1/2 times over a two month period. The 1/2 occurs because of the international dateline and the longitudinal bypass of the periodontal tabulator.
At 12:01 a.m., which is technically the day after Christmas, if a Christmas song is playing, it will suddenly stop, and that is the last of the songs until next November.
After deep thought, lasting approximately thirty seconds, I have decided the song, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, is not suitable as a lesson for children, nor does it show a proper attitude toward Christmas.
Let’s take a quick look at the first line for starters, which includes the names of the “other” reindeer:
The Other Reindeer are named Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. Some of these names may appear at first to be innocuous, but consider Vixen. A vixen, despite some men using it in an affectionate and rueful way to describe a woman they lust after, means “a spiteful and mean female.”
Already, we are gaining insight into Santa’s character, and it isn’t pretty.
Dasher sounds as if he has ADD, while Dancer and Prancer are iffy at best; what is Santa trying to say here? And when you get to Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen, you get a strange mix of household cleansers, mythological demi-gods, and putative members of the Communist Party.
The name Rudolph is a dead giveaway to Santa’s true proclivities and tendencies towards Communism.
I’ll bet he is not a capitalist at all, as many Black Friday consumers and big box retailers would have us believe. I’m surprised he would bother coming here and take a chance of getting stuck in a chimney. By and large, we are a democratic society, which Russia is supposed to be now, but I think we know better. Their leader was Putin office and never left.
Santa is either being very magnanimous with his gift-giving to Americans, or else he is planting surveillance devices in our homes.
On Christmas morning, I advise you to check for strange cockroaches with electronic boxes strapped to their backs, or moths inordinately interested in your gasps of glee and what you’re putting into your hot chocolate when you think no one is looking.
We’ve established that Santa is an agent for the KGB, which doesn’t exist anymore. Supposedly. That’s what they want us to think, anyway. He may also be misogynistic. We’ve also established that his reindeer are undercover agents with stupid cover names. Better they should have picked “Steve” or “Mike.”
According to his biographer, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer had a very shiny nose. This reindeer hit the bottle consistently for many years in order to achieve this kind of facial glow. A glow bright enough to cut fog.
Do not invite this reindeer to your house if you don’t like drunks. He will embarrass you and the kids, especially if he’s an uncle. He’ll crack dirty jokes and be the only one who laughs at them.
On the other hand, Rudolph may just be a victim of severe rosacea.
The typing monitor asked if I meant “aerospace,” instead of rosacea; why would Rudolph be an unfortunate victim of aerospace, unless Nasa engineers found a way to replace his bright, shiny nose on the sleigh and unceremoniously retired him? In that case, he’s going down in history for having something no one else wants. But he did make lemonade from the lemons he was given and deserves credit for that.
The other reindeer however, are a bunch of kiss-ass, brown nosers.
They never let Rudolph join in any reindeer games (which consist of what, I’d like to know; almost everyone could use a fourth for bridge, and presumably some of the other reindeer are unavailable at times for games), despite being Communists and demi-gods, who are supposed to be more equitably inclined and charitable toward their fellow reindeer.
They didn’t like him simply because of his appearance. Until Santa asked him to lead his sleigh on a foggy night. What, suddenly his nose is a positive thing, because the Big Guy asked for his help?
Santa was too busy before to check whether the reindeer in HIS OWN BACKYARD were “being nice,” but he can sure keep tabs on the rest of us billions. At the very least, he could have posted some anti-bullying campaign posters around the North Pole.
Why Santa never used Rudolph before on dark nights, I don’t know. Communists are famous for saying “Each to his own talents or capacity,” or “Fur hats for everybody!” or “Do what we say, or go to Siberia,” or something along those lines.
I don’t think this song is either patriotic or sociologically relevant to the season. I still like Rudolph and always have, despite my parents’ warnings about who to choose as friends.
His nose is useful for many things, mainly to shine a light on despicable reindeer behavior.
We all know Santa lives in Scandinavia which is a terribly politically correct region – so all those reindeer names need to be examined in that linguistic context. Scandis would have changed that song long ago if what you maintain held true there. To prove my point, years before PC, they marketed a caramel gravy darkener called Negro. The last time I was up there, I wanted to purchase one of those and found the name had been changed to Vegetal. I have kept the original Negro container hoping to sell it for vast sums on E-Bay someday or to blackmail Norway if need ever arises. By the way, Jif is the favourite household cleanser in that country. Comet is still the kind with a tail. (uh oh) And a vixen is a ragata in Swedish.
Of course there is still the problem that Finland claims to be the true home of Santa – and you know their neighbour is Putin Office, et.al. So a case could be made for your premise just by proximity. The Finns had to change their concept of PC very often down the centuries to appease whoever was conquering them at the time. So now they are just tired of the whole concept. Incidently, I always associated Rudolph with fascists, not communists (Hess, e.g.).
You are far better informed and educated than I am, Rudolph is now a fascist hiding behind a sweet exterior. I’ve already learned more about Finland from your comment than I ever knew, except for the sauna thing, and rolling around in the snow.
Francisco called a fellow flight attendant ‘negra’ once, in an affectionate way, because he was Puerto Rican, and she got upset with him. It means black. Whaddaya gonna do?
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