Rudolph
I was listening to some Christmas music and it occurred to me to ask God if the story of Rudolph was true. She kind of dodged the question for a little bit but finally gave in to my persistence.
She told me that it was actually a misinterpretation of events.
It seems the real story is that Santa had been noticing the rise of technology down south and was interested in adapting some of it for his own uses, and being that he had a very creative and talented work force, he didn’t want to just copy what we had. So he saw cars on the street and saw what a boon it was at night to have headlights and he decided he wanted something like that for his sleigh.
He went to the elves and talked to some of their designers about the problem. They assured him that putting headlights on a sleigh was a lousy idea. He’d just end up staring at the rear ends of the two hindmost reindeer and ruining his night vision. So they realized that they needed to put the light out in front of the reindeer. They wanted to come up with something that matched the aesthetics of the whole “reindeer pulling a sleigh†motif and they wanted something that wouldn’t spook the working reindeer.
And then they got a little carried away, not too mention a little overconfident in their abilities.
They made a mechanical reindeer. With a bright light where the nose should be.
At first the reindeer didn’t know what to make of it. Then they got the idea that they were being replaced. Automation is the wave of the future, they thought, and here’s our “John Henry†moment. Just as John Henry couldn’t match the power of the steam engine when it came to doing work, the reindeer knew that they wouldn’t be able to outfly a machine and couldn’t match Rudolph for new features like headlights.
There wasn’t much they could do though. They weren’t willing to engage in outright sabotage, so they just tried to ignore it. They wouldn’t let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.
Then Gene Autry got ahold of the story and the rest is history.
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