Those of you who follow my blogging already know. . . I have a nephew, and at this stage of my life, a nephew is just like a son, only I send him home when he's sick, cranky, or I have a date.At 25 months, nearly three years old in every other way, we watched Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer for the very first time together. He loves that word, "together" because he hears it on Noggin all the time. "Together" down the water slides at the swim park, "together" on the swing at the neighborhood playground. So he watched, intently, one of my most cherished Christmas traditions play out in stop animation. I'm hoping I pass on a holiday tradition to our family's new generation, no genetic help from me. . . yet. Today, I made sure he got his Hallmark Rudolph collector's plush toy, especially since he clearly appreciated the movie already, clapped at the Abominable Snow Monster's rehabilitation and star-placing rank on his first viewing, while asking to see the movie two times two days in a row. He earned that red-nosed song-singing plush toy toute-suite.
But watching Rudolph got me thinking about its tradition. I knew the stop-animation TV special was created around the time I was born, 1964 in fact, predating me. But I wondered exactly when Rudolph entered the Christmas Collective Consciousness. When did Rudolph join Santa Claus's team?
I began with my own mom, asking her if she had learned the song of Rudolph as a girl. Negatory. No such character in her Christmas Memory. I wondered if he was "born" in that 1964 Christmas special, if I had witnessed, along with the rest of my generation, the birth of a Christmas legend. I was pretty pumped feeling special that the Brady Boomers had produced such an endearing wonder. It was Mom who suggested I look it up on Google.
Sigh. . . . Google ruined my fleeting dream of participating in helping to create folklore in my lifetime. Rudolph was created by an employee of Montgomery Ward and accused of being "fakelore." Now, I've read what "fakelore" is supposed to be, and after two reads, I'm still having trouble identifying "fakelore." Some stupid folklorist has accused Rudolph of being "fakelore" because the reindeer has encroached on the real folklore of the Santa legend claiming genuine folklore status alongside Santa. So Rudolph is fake because he has piggy-backed onto the "real" folklore of Santa Claus? Some folklorists need to have that heart-busting WhoVille nestled down in their frozen valleys because Rudolph is very very real to most of us whose dollars determine a successful Santa season.
Hallmark knows this, and now, so does my nephew.
And as the final bars roll through my mind, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, you'll go down in hi-sto-ry!" I smile broadly that the tradition of Rudolph moves into folklore. . .
