This is an excerpt from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An American Hero, by Ronald D. Lankford, Jr.
I never planned to write a book about Rudolph. He was so much a part of my childhood, so much a part of the kind of Christmas I had grown up with, that I just accepted him as having always been there. It did not occur to me that Rudolph—the modest hero with a secret resource—reflected deeply held American values.
My innocence about the connection between Rudolph and our holiday values started to change a couple of years ago when I was writing about American Christmas songs. One of those songs, naturally, was Johnny Marks's “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” As I began researching, several things occupied my thoughts. Rudolph, as James H. Barnett noted in 1954, was the only new addition to our Christmas lore in a hundred years. While Barnett wrote this in the 1950's, it remains true: as much as we love Frosty and other Christmas critters, none of them have become as central as Rudolph. The truth of this, though, fails to explain why Rudolph was accepted into Christmas lore so quickly. Likewise, it fails to explain how Rudolph's image has remained expansive enough to speak to Americans across—as I write this—seven decades.
Despite these commercial origins, children and
even parents accepted Rudolph as though he were the genuine article.
Folklorists could label the Jolly Green Giant “fakelore” or use the term “industrial folklore”
to define the Trix rabbit, but children—learning about the reindeer in books,
View-Master reels, a game, a cartoon, in song, and multiple pieces of
merchandise—seemed oblivious to academic concerns. Clearly, Robert L. May wrote
Rudolph in 1939; equally clear, he
wrote Rudolph at the request of his
supervisor as a work-for-hire at Montgomery Ward. Likewise, a popular
groundswell greeted Rudolph on his introduction in 1939 and reintroduction in
1946; this groundswell was heightened considerably, however, by Montgomery
Ward’s giveaway of six million copies of the Rudolph booklet. While we can argue whether commercial or creative
forces exerted more influence over Rudolph’s growth in popular culture, both
had a role to play. Rudolph’s grounding in both commercial and folk culture
produced, I believe, an intriguing paradox worth looking into.
...
[A
1948 article in Coronet Magazine by
Stanley Frankel] begins by returning to May and his four-year-old daughter in
the family’s Chicago apartment in the winter of 1938:
On a December night in Chicago ten
years ago, a little girl climbed onto
her father’s lap and asked a question. It was a simple question, asked in childish curiosity, yet it had a
heart-rending effect on Robert May.
“Daddy,” four-year-old Barbara
May asked, “why isn’t my Mommy
just like everybody else’s mommy?”
May’s
wife, Evelyn, had been suffering from cancer for the last two years. Frankel
continued: “The terrible ordeal already had shattered two adult lives. Now, May
suddenly realized, the happiness of his growing daughter was also in jeopardy.”
Barbara’s question, asked in the midst of the December holiday season, demanded
an answer.
Frankel
sketches May’s family predicament against the backdrop of dire financial
circumstances. In 1938 the Depression remained an economic reality for many
Americans. For the May family, doctor’s visits and medicine for Evelyn
stretched an already thin budget, putting the family into debt. The Mays’
living space is described as a “shabby two-room apartment,” the kind of place a
Montgomery Ward copywriter might inhabit. Clearly Robert May, the skinny,
picked-on underdog since early childhood, had missed the opportunities of his
Dartmouth colleagues. “Now, at 33, May was deep in debt, depressed and
miserable.”
May’s
salvation, however, lay close at hand. To answer Barbara’s question he would
create a children’s story drawn from the emotional tumult of his own childhood:
the story of a young reindeer named Rudolph who had a shiny red nose. Each
night, Barbara would ask her father to recite the adventures of Rudolph one
more time. Finally, May decided to prepare a rudimentary copy of the book for
her as a Christmas gift, writing the poem in verse and mimicking “A Visit from
St. Nicholas.” Pouring himself into the project, he wanted to provide a worthy
gift for Barbara, despite the family’s meager finances. As he prepared the booklet,
however, tragedy struck: Evelyn died. Instead of setting the project aside
during this period of grief, however, May continued to work on the booklet,
determined to finish it by Christmastime.
At
this nadir, with May left alone to raise his young daughter, fate intervened.
He was invited to an office Christmas party at Montgomery Ward, and while he
wanted to stay at home, colleagues persuaded him to attend. He brought along
Barbara’s gift and read it to his office-mates that evening. At first they
laughed along with Rudolph’s antics—May’s poem seemed like no more than another
part of the evening’s fun and games. But as May continued, the crowd settled
down and listened quietly. When he reached the end, everyone broke into
applause. After several executives requested copies of Rudolph, the young reindeer and May’s future was set on a new
course.
Ronald D. Lankford, Jr. is the author of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An American Hero