Every Christmas Eve, Santa loads his sleigh with gifts, and magical reindeer guide him around the world. Lots of folks can name the reindeer – on Comet, on Cupid! But few know how Prancer, Dasher and the rest got their names. Lake Placid musician and storyteller Julie Robards was a children’s entertainer at Santa’s Workshop in Wilmington for 11 years. She tells WAMC North Country Bureau Chief Pat Bradley that her tales for children, along with the region’s Olympic heritage, germinated the idea to write “The Reindeer Games: How Santa’s Reindeer Got Their Names.”
Gene Autry sings the classic Christmas carol: "You know Dasher and Dasher and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen. But do you recall ..."
How they got their names? Santa had a type of Olympics for reindeer and the best of the best reindeer in the competitions got new names.
Can you describe this Olympic-style competition and how the reindeer compete?
Santa needed to have a reindeer team to pull his sleigh around the world in just one night and he figured what he needed was the best of the best reindeer athletes to do the job. So he made a great announcement and reindeer from all around the world came to the North Pole to begin training and try out for the Christmas Olympics. The announcement is in spring. They arrive in the summer and they started to develop their skills. And then in the fall Santa has this competition with a number of events and one event is the hundred-yard dash and the deer that wins that becomes Dasher. And then they have an Olympic-type couples skating. The ones that do the best he names Dancer and Prancer. Vixen is an agile reindeer who can go through an obstacle course with the skill of a crafty fox. And a female fox is actually called a vixen. And so this reindeer beat the obstacle course, jumped over chimneys and around steeple clocks. And Santa said: “You’re quick and clever like a fox. I’ll call you Vixen.” We have Comet who flew so high and so far and so fast when he went around the North Pole all Santa saw was his long tail. And Santa said “You blazed across the sky. You were like a shooting star. I’m going to call you Comet.” And then we have Donner and Blitzen, who are two German reindeer. And these two brothers they hooked up to the sleigh and they began moving with great force and Santa said two German words are your new names. Donner, which means thunder, and Blitzen which means lightning. So that’s how the reindeer got their names. And after I go through this all the kids would say oh, what about Rudolph?
Gene Autry sings “All of the other reindeer used to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.”
His father, his poppa, said those are rude deer. You need to turn them off. And that’s how the little deer got the name Rudolph. And the other thing that I really tried to impress upon the children was that it’s okay to be an individual and not just part of a herd. The illustrator Grace Potthast, when she did the illustrations, we have reindeer that are strong. We have reindeer that are kind and loving. There are reindeer who help others. There are male reindeer and female reindeer and so it busts up that traditional gender role that all the reindeer were males and they all looked alike. The message is be yourself. Work on your strengths. There’s a place for you on the team. And she created reindeer that showed different personalities, different characteristics, individuality. And she did a beautiful, beautiful job with the watercolor illustrations. They are just stunning.
Going back to how the reindeer got their names, did you have any challenges determining the source of any of the reindeer’s names?
I think the toughest reindeer name to come up with was Rudolph. I researched the name Rudolph and found that it meant timid or shy. He was timid and shy because the deer were rude and his Poppa said they are rude, turn them off. And that’s how the little deer got the name Rudolph. And I think the final message is really important to children: do not bully because it can really hurt somebody. But that somebody became the most important one on the team. I think it’s just a great book that teaches good life lessons to children to be dedicated to what you believe in, to work hard, to be kind and loving. There’s great diversity in the book, as I said there are female and male and they’re equal, different but equal. And I think that those messages come through loud and clear to children
Julie Robards’ book “The Reindeer Games: How Santa’s Reindeer Got Their Names” Is available online at lulu.com and at stores in Lake Placid and Jay, NY.
