This is a repeat of the editor's column from last December.
I have, on one or two occasions, created something of an uproar at the annual neighborhood Christmas carol sing by expressing my profound loathing for the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” (Last year I created an uproar of an entirely different kind by whipping out my ubiquitous red pen and editing the lyrics handouts—“With angelic hose proclaim,” indeed. But that’s another story.)
I have hated the Rudolph song ever since I figured out what it was actually about. Here is the gist: Rudolph is born with a very special gift, or a disfigurement, depending on how you look at it: His nose is red, and it glows like Dick Cheney holding up a dead duck for the camera. Santa Claus’s other eight reindeer gang up on Rudolph and make his life a living hell by laughing at him, verbally assaulting him, and completely excluding him from their social activities. Santa, the one authority figure who can put a stop to these cruel shenanigans, apparently does absolutely nothing—until, one foggy Christmas Eve, he realizes that Rudolph, with his very shiny nose, is his only hope for averting a Christmas catastrophe by guiding the sleigh to deliver all the toys.
Well, Rudolph, who is either more magnanimous than most of us or totally cowed by a lifetime of abuse, consents to and successfully accomplishes this historic mission, upon which the other reindeer decide they love him and shower him with praise.
And how does Rudolph respond to their sudden regard for him? Well, we’re not told that. Personally, I think he should tell those thugs of fellow reindeer to kiss his antlers, and Santa to guide his own damned sleigh next time. Or is he just to forget that the jolly old elf abandoned him in his time of need and be pathetically grateful now that his peers claim to esteem him because he was somehow able to pull off a truly epic feat? What if the fog hadn’t come along when it did? What if he had done his utmost to guide the sleigh and failed? Prancer, Dancer, and the other flying goons would still be kicking him from one end of the toy shop to the other, and Santa would still be standing around doing no more than wringing his hands and moaning, “Oh, deer, oh, deer”—if that.
What a morally bankrupt tale. And we teach it to our children. At Christmastime.
Okay, okay, maybe I should take this rant down a notch; it’s only a stupid song. But, in a way, that’s just the point. Millions of people have blithely sung Rudolph at every Christmas that has passed in the sixty-seven years since it was written. Do they think about what it is they are singing? Or do they accept as perfectly understandable and natural the atrocious sentiments that underlie this infernally catchy little ditty?
Sometimes there is less to be learned about ourselves in the great pronouncements and acts of our times than there is in the cultural trivia we pass along from one generation to the next. I hear faint echoes of Rudolph every time someone says, “Boys will be boys” when the class bully beats the stuffings out of the class scapegoat, or expresses shock when some relentlessly tormented kid finally snaps and commits an antisocial act that hurts people, or points to the extraordinary achievements of some tiny few exceptional members of a particular group as if to say, “See? We should grant them their dignity because they can invent things.”
Nobody of good will should have to prove him or herself worthy of respect. Nobody should have to earn the right to be treated as human by doing something superhuman just for being different or special or of a genetic heritage other than our own.
At this time of year we become preoccupied with blessedness on the grand scale: peace on earth; good will to all. Those concepts are a bit too expansive for my feeble imagination to grasp, so I prefer to think much smaller: of the little boy whose prospects are stunted by what racial group he was born into; of the little girl sitting alone on the playground because she’s "too smart for a girl"; of the lovers cut off from their families because of whom they love; of the otherwise kind, generous, and upstanding individuals who face disapprobation because they worship the wrong god or no god at all. Of anyone who is forced to stand on the outside looking in, through no fault of their own.
For all our sakes, I wish for a better day—one that will bring the socially bereft tidings of comfort and joy. In the meantime, let’s consign Rudolph to the dustbins of Christmas Past, and see if we can’t find a more edifying song to teach the kids.
—Lisa Ferraro Parmelee, Editor
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