Santa's Reindeer: A Sweary History
An etymological and authorial analysis of eight hypersonic ungulates
You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen
Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen
But they were all of them deceived
For another reindeer was made
I stole that from a Tolkien humor account.
I shared the following meme on Facebook as an excuse to also share my story of people scarfing down Donner kebobs that time back in 1846 when winter came early to the Sierra Nevada mountains. Descriptions of eating peoplemeat were of no moment, but the meme had some readers vexed like Vixen after Dancer had a Festivus meal of refried beans.
What had people sending me exclamation-point-ridden missives via my DMs? The spelling of “Donner.” There is a whole fucking rabbit hole of bunny poop around Rudolph’s dad’s name, including heated debate over authorship of the original poem. In sweary fashion, I shall endeavor to resolve the Christmas mystery. This … is man’s work. Continues below …
And fuck the algorithms too. Make sure you see all my stories with a free subscription. Or paid. Paid is also good.
Santa’s sleigh did not originally have an 8 reindeer-power engine. Rather, it was only one poor unnamed bastard lugging all that shit, appearing in an 1821 anonymous illustrated children’s poem titled Old Santeclause with Much Delight. But then consumerism ran amok, and you fuckers were spending the mortgage money on frivolity and Santa needed to upgrade his powertrain to move his heavily laden sleigh.
The eight reindeer first flew into our lives via a poem you likely know as “The Night Before Christmas.” It was originally published in 1823, anonymously, under the title “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas.” And while there were no mice stirring inside the house, outside on the lawn the laws of physics were being fucked with. It made a clatter.
Physics professor Arnold Pompos ran the numbers based on visiting 800 million kids in 200 million homes and gave the red-suited fat man an extra 24 hours by using time zones to his advantage and still came up with the flying reindeer traveling at almost 3 million miles per hour. At those speeds, Santa, all the reindeer, and the PS5 you asked for would be vaporized.
It’s okay. They’re magic. They’ll be fine.
Anyfuckingway, this two-century old poem. Dasher and Dancer and the rest are celebrating their bicentennial this year, so let’s dig a little deeper … Stockings are hung, children are nestled, Tom Cruise isn’t going near as fast as these four-legged fuckers … Santa “whistled, and shouted, and called them by name:”
Dunder and Blixem? The fuck?
Yeah, that’s an image of the original poem, published on December 23, 1823, in the Sentinel newspaper of Troy, New York. The paper published it beginning with “We know not to whom we are indebted for the following description of that unwearied patron of children—that homely but delightful personification of parental kindness—Sante Claus.”
Homely? That’s a little harsh. Why you gotta do him like that? Also, “Sante”? Is that why Cindy Lou Who pronounces it that way when she says to the Grinch hey you green-ass shitgoblin the fuck are you doing with our tree?
Sorry I’m ADHDing we gotta talk reindeer names not reindeer games that was a terrible Ben Affleck movie. Even worse that Batman vs. Superman.
Dunder and Blixem. That’s Dutch for Thunder and Lightning, sort of. The Dutch part is relevant, as is the shit spelling. Because as I said, the poem was anonymous, for a time. Maybe.
Fourteen years after it was published, Clement Clarke Moore, an American writer, was named as the author. I suppose there was some cachet being associated it. It’s been referred to as “the best known verses ever written by an American,” and it literally via literature created the visual concept of how we imagine the dude we use to terrorize children into being good.
The correct Dutch spelling for thunder and lightning is not dunder and blixem, but donder and blicksem. Eh whatever close enough, right? But then the names evolved. A short time later, in another printing, Blixem got changed to Blixen, to get it to rhyme better with Vixen. Not long after that someone said well fuck if we’re changing names let’s throw a bit of German in there and change it to Blitzen, which is how they say lightning.
At some point, because the paper company from The Office was not yet a thing, someone said hey Dunder is fucked up too. The Dutch word for thunder is Donder. And so, for a while, the poem referred to the pair as Donder and Blitzen, mixing Dutch thunder with German lightning. Alas, the thunderous courage of the Dutch was no match for the German Blitzkrieg, which conquered them in a mere five days during World War II.
When did Donder evolve again into Donner, which is the German word for thunder, so the pair could be from the Deutsch Fatherland? Who the fuck knows? But we do know the transformation was complete by 1939 when the red-nosed mutant showed up in a book about how one’s differences are only accepted by society when people figure out a way to exploit them. Written by Robert May, the tale of Rudolph was published by the Montgomery Ward department store because buy your ungrateful crotch goblin some fuckin’ presents already.
So, shit evolves. It’s fucking Donner now and has been for over eight decades get over it already and find something else to bitch about in my Facebook comment section. Let’s talk authorship controversy.
Why did it take Moore so long to claim authorship? And who else could have written it?
Anonymous publication of poetry was a thing at the time, unlike now when everyone shows their entire ass on TikTok or Instagram in an effort to be an influencer. But as the poem became evermore famous, the desire to know the identity of the author grew, and in 1837 a friend of Moore’s said it was his pal, Clement. What’s more, Moore didn’t “confirm” he wrote it for another seven years, in 1844, allowing it to be included in an anthology of his writing because his kids were saying come on please dad. It’s worth noting that Moore was an accomplished author and poet and didn’t need to steal credit; he preferred to be known for his more serious writing. He also had money coming his ass from subdividing and developing a bunch of New York real estate he inherited, so there was no financial motivation.
It's also convenient that the guy who some say is the true author had been dead for eight years when Moore’s friend outed him as the author.
Henry Livingston Jr. was distantly related to Moore via the latter’s wife. He was an author and a poet, and had a habit of keeping his poems anonymous. Also, he had Dutch ancestry. That last part might explain the Dutch words for thunder and lightning, but then you have to ask wouldn’t he have known how to fucking spell them correctly?
Anyway, it’s not like today when news spreads fast, especially fake news. Was Moore’s claim to authorship fake news? The Livingston family thought so. They finally learned that Moore was taking credit in 1859 and called bullshit, saying they had known for decades that their father wrote it and had read it to them before it was first published. Moore, at that point, was an old man near death and I assume didn’t give a fuck.
There was no direct evidence that Livingston was the author, and he never publicly claimed to be. But then the brainiacs got involved.
Because both men had written a bunch of shit, scholars said let’s microscope this shit. Of course, because academia, no one could agree. But it is worth reporting that in 2016 the English professor MacDonald P. Jackson, whose career focus is authorship attribution, published a book about the controversy. Titled Who Wrote “The Night Before Christmas”?, Jackson proclaimed Moore to be a lying fucking liar, as the analysis of the two men’s writing styles shows Livingston to be the true author.
Perhaps you don’t give a fuck. You know who I don’t give a fuck about? Olive, the other reindeer. She was the asshole calling Rudolph all those nasty names. Fuck that bully.
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A stolen meme:
Who is the meanest reindeer in Santa's herd? Olive. You've heard the song: Olive, the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names.
Saving this to read to the grandkids Christmas Eve!