Sadly, 2023 did not end on a positive note as the world currently witnesses two wars: 1) The Mideast and 2) Russia-Ukraine. Let me turn to a cheerier note about a favorite song of mine in my youth that is sung during Christmas time:
Rudolf, the Red Nosed-Reindeer
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?
Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows
All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Join in any reindeer games
Then one foggy Christmas eve
Santa came to say
“Rudolph, with your nose so bright
Won’t you guide my sleigh tonight?”
Then how the reindeer loved him
As they shouted out with glee
Rudolph, the red-nosed reindeer
You’ll go down in history
In looking at the lyrics of the song, it may be helpful to recognize that many of the more secular, less religious songs, were written by Jewish writers. Perhaps the most famous of them all: White Christmas was written by Irving Berlin, a Jewish American composer and lyricist. This song reached a high note when Bing Crosby first sung it in the 1942 film, Holiday Inn.
Robert L. May, a Jewish male, introduced Rudoph to the world in 1939 as an assignment for Chicago-based Montgomery Ward Department Store’s marketing campaign. Mr. May was said to be an outlier like Rudolph inasmuch as early in his life he skipped a grade in school, was smaller than his classmates, and felt himself to be a loser. Ten years later, in 1949, Johnny Marks another Jewish male, composed the music and lyrics to Rudolph. Ironically, in 1947, he married the sister of Robert May, Margaret May Marks. Perhaps the work that Robert May had done earlier inspired Marks to compose the song so well-known to children, not only from America, but from all over the world.
The most prominent part of Rudolph, his red nose, is really what the song is all about. Of course, Jewish people, me included, have been teased about the size of our nose. My wife’s late sister-in-law, who was not Jewish, once asked my wife, whose nose is by no measure big, whether she had a nose job. In 1978, I was giving a lecture to a class of psychology students from Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. When one of them asked if I were Jewish and I replied in the affirmative, he stated that he was from Germany and during his childhood, he had become terrified upon being accosted by German soldiers who had mistaken him for a Jew. When asked why this happened, he said it was because of his unusually large nose.
Rudolph is also chastised and bullied because of his nose. But it is his shiny nose that attracts Santa who asks him to “guide my sleigh tonight.” Suddenly Rudolph is regarded in a positive light as “all the reindeer loved him.” One can only guess the many thoughts May and Marks may have had in first creating Rudolph, and then, subsequently, composing a song and lyrics. Perhaps the deep need for Jewish people to fit into America, in part, inspired the creation of a deer that gains both admiration and fame despite the protuberance of its nose. But it also could have been an inspiration to children, who like May, perhaps did not fit into or were not accepted by any peer group.
If we expand the above idea of some people not fitting into a society, perhaps this speaks to what it’s like to come and settle in a foreign country, such as America, where those that are native born often slight them. But, if initially they are derided, be it for their customs that they bring to their new home or their outer appearance, their own effort, embodied in their uniqueness, often will culminate in acceptance. After all, isn’t America a land where immigrants, so much a part of the foundation of this country, set out to fulfill their dreams? In this sense, Rudolph, along with other songs, represented to its Jewish writers a means of fulfilling their dreams by contributing to the music and lyrics that added to the celebration of Christmas.
Dr. Bernard F. Natelson 