One of the world’s most cherished Christmas songs, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer has proved himself a versatile little creature. From the time the song was first released, in 1949, to the present day, he has weathered all sorts of changes. Yet still Rudolph lights our way with his messages of hope, stoicism and eventual triumph over adversity – a story to charm generation after generation.
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What’s the story behind Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer?
The story of Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer begins with Robert L May, an advertising copywriter for the Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago. “Here I was, heavily in debt at age 35, still grinding out catalogue copy,” May told The Gettysburg Times in 1975, a year before his death at age 71. May related how, one morning, he was asked by his boss to do something different from his usual tasks – to create a festive book for children, preferably an “animal story with a main character”, in order to bring the customers in at Christmas. It was something novel, so May agreed to give it a try.
May’s little daughter loved the reindeer at the local zoo, so May started to work up a character based on the animal. “Suppose he were an underdog,” he thought. “A loser, yet triumphant in the end.” He considered what could make his reindeer different. “Suddenly I had it!” he said. “A nose! A bright red nose that would shine through the fog like a floodlight.”
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May presented the idea to his boss. But he was crestfallen as his little creation, whom he had named Rudolph, got a frosty reception. By this point May was quite attached to Rudolph so, instead of giving up, he asked a colleague from the art department to create a few sketches drawn from the real-life reindeers at the zoo – with the cuteness ramped up. This his colleague did, and May, armed with the drawings, went back to his boss. “Bob,” his boss told May, “forget what I said, and put the story into finished form.”
May gleefully did so, and in the first year of its publication – 1939 – over 2.4 million copies of May’s story were distributed to children. The tale of Rudolph, mocked by his more elegant reindeer peers but whose unsightly nose ends up being crucial to Santa, soon became a Christmas staple.
Who wrote The song Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer?
Robert May’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, was a New York songwriter. He kept with him a little notebook, in which he scribbled down possible titles and rough ideas for songs. “I had [Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer] in this book for roughly ten years,” Marks said in 1972. “And then I wrote it. And what I wrote, I did not like.” Marks shelved the idea for another year.
He then had another go, lightening the tempo and rewriting the lyrics. Alongside the feel of May’s original story, Marks brought in ideas from the 1823 poem A Visit From St Nicolas, which had first given Santa’s reindeers their famous names. This time, the composition captured the playful spirit of the book and, by 1949, the song was finished. Marks was optimistic about its chances. “I thought it was going to be a hit,” he said, “but just a regular hit! I didn’t think it was going to go on forever.”
Who originally sang Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer?
Johnny Marks sent Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer to Gene Autry, the “Singing Cowboy”, an incredibly popular singer and star of radio, TV and film. “I didn’t really think much of [the song] either way,” Autry said in the 80s. “But [my wife] liked the story it told and the moral it taught.” Autry wisely listened to her, and recorded Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer in June 1949, for release later in the year. Children loved it, and it went to No.1 in the US during the Christmas season.
