Discover the Untold Story Behind Santa’s Reindeer and Rudolph’s Rise to Fame

If you grew up in a place where Christmas is celebrated, there’s a decent chance that you’ve heard the song — or at least the story — of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. But it turns out that Rudolph is one of the more recent additions to the mythology that dates back to a time before Christmas was even celebrated. The story of how Santa and his famous retinue of reindeer became a core part of the Christmas tradition is more tangled than you might initially think.

While Christmas has become a Christian religious holiday for many people, its history shows it to be more of a mix of mythology, the solstice, and a savvy advertising campaign. A study of history shows that the “reason for the season” can be just about anything you want depending on your beliefs.

Reindeer in the Old World

Many of the old Christmas traditions we celebrate today were developed to synthesize Christian doctrine with the pagan rituals that preceded them. Reindeer appear throughout the mythology and history of Arctic peoples. As one of the most prodigious sources of food and one of the last animals to be truly domesticated in the north, the reindeer — also known as the caribou — were often treated with reverence and a sense of mystery. Cultures as far afield as Mongolia, Canada, and Scandinavia feature reindeer prominently in their legends and stories, which is how reindeer would become closely associated with Santa Claus.

The First Appearance of Santa’s Reindeer

While characters resembling Santa Claus have circulated throughout the world for centuries, the notion of a sleigh pulled by reindeer wouldn’t become prominent until the 19th century. It was at this time that America and England were both experiencing a renaissance of Christmas celebrations after a period of Puritanical opposition to the holiday. Washington Irving referenced Santa Claus “riding over the tops of the trees, in that self-same wagon” in 1812 with no reference to reindeer pulling the wagon.

Nine years later, the first known association between reindeer and Santa Claus appeared in an anonymous poem entitled “A New Year’s Present”. The unnamed deer are mentioned briefly and only in a single line. The name of the author remained anonymous, but the poem’s publisher revealed that the author had learned of reindeer thanks to his mother passing down indigenous stories of the creatures.

Two years later, the mythology of the reindeer would be expanded. The poem “The Night Before Christmas” was written by Professor Clement Clarke Moore. First published in 1823, the story was written to entertain his daughters. Moore was initially hesitant to submit it to a publisher out of concerns that it was too silly. In fact, he kept his authorship of the poem a secret for decades out of concern that it would besmirch his reputation as a professor of ancient languages. But the poem would soon become a bestseller, and his eight reindeer would remain the recognized members of Santa Claus’ crew for the next two hundred years, and counting.

The Identities of Santa’s Original Reindeer

“The Night Before Christmas” originally identified eight reindeer that lead Santa Claus’ sleigh every holiday. And while the poem gendered the reindeer as males, biology tells us that couldn’t be the case. Male reindeer shed both large amounts of body weight and their antlers after mating season, and that coincidentally falls right before winter. Only female reindeer would have the antlers — and the stamina to pull a sleigh with one jolly fat man — during the deepest days of winter.

While others have anthropomorphized the reindeer to give them more distinct personalities, the names seem to be chosen as much for how they fit within the rhythm of the poem than as a means to provide a deeper personality. Many of the names are derived from German. Dasher is actually drawn from the German word for a purse-maker. Donner and Blitzen — sometimes written as Dunder and Blixem — come from the German phrase for thunder and lightning. These are the eight original reindeer as they appeared in Clement Moore’s poem.

• Dasher
• Dancer
• Prancer
• Vixen
• Comet
• Cupid
• Donner
• Blitzen

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

While other authors would try to establish their own mythology surrounding Santa Claus’ reindeer, it would be over a century before another reindeer would be added to the roster and recognized on a global level. Despite being called the most famous reindeer of all in the song named after him, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was actually the result of a savvy advertising campaign.

Soda manufacturer Coca-Cola had found great success in the 1920s by releasing holiday ads that featured Jolly Old Saint Nick drinking their brand of soda. Chicago department store Montgomery Ward saw the potential of a Christmas campaign for drumming up business, and they commissioned copywriter Robert L. May to create a character who they could feature in free coloring books for kids. The character May designed worked because it came from personal experience — with May drawing from his own experiences of being bullied as a child to envision a lonely reindeer whose unique glowing nose offered a way to save Christmas.

The character became a major hit. In the decades that followed, Rudolph would be the subject of a song and a movie, and his likeness would grace countless different types of merchandise. Far from being just the holiday spokesperson for a local department store, Rudolph actually became the most famous reindeer of all! Despite attempts to introduce members of Rudolph’s family — including a brother named Rustie and a son called Robbie — none have resonated with the public like Rudolph.