WINSTON WEEKLY^[1]

December 8, 2024

Vol. 2, No. 49

REINDEER ROUNDUP[2]

Although Rudolph was eventually popularized in the 1949 song with the phrase, “the most famous reindeer of all,” the origins of Rudolph and reindeer are often lost in the season’s festivities. The late copywriter Robert L. May developed Rudolph for Montgomery Ward’s annual Christmas coloring book promotion. Montgomery Ward was once a nationally known mail-order business that developed into a department store chain before the stores closed in 2001.

May created Rudolph in 1939, partially because his daughter was obsessed with the deer at Chicago’s Lincoln Park Zoo. At the time, May was heavily in debt and his wife was dying from a long illness. Those sad experiences and May’s childhood as a self-described shy and small “underdog” were central to the Rudolph character.  May eventually shared that Rudolph is a “story of acceptance,” with the moral that “tolerance and perseverance can overcome adversity.”

Herding reindeer started in Alaska a century ago after more than a thousand were imported from Siberia. Alaska is currently home to more than 30,000 reindeer, including multiple subspecies. Many live on the Seward Peninsula, with a lifespan of 15-20 years. Male and female reindeer grow antlers, as do reindeer calves under age one. Reindeer typically eat plants such as moss, grass, and lichen.

THIS WEEK’S ACTIVITY

Do you know whether reindeer and caribou are the same? If you were to write a book about reindeer today, what name would you give the central character? Would it be fiction or non-fiction? If fiction, where would the reindeer live and eat?

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[1] Copyright December 8, 2024. Winston Weekly is a weekly newsletter and blog by Alysen Bayles available at www.baylesconnect.com or by e-mail at baylesconnect@gmail.com. Please feel free to share with the appropriate attribute.

[2] Resources: Olivia B. Waxman, The Surprisingly Sad True Story Behind ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer’, October20, 2018, www.time.com; The Other 364 Days of the Year, www.usgs.gov, Dec. 18, 2015, US Geological Survey, History of Reindeer in Alaska, https://www.uaf.edu