Christmas is a time of celebration when we return to certain stories and songs and traditions that help us remember the real reason for the season. Everything about our worship tonight is steeped in tradition and history, and it just wouldn’t be Christmas without these things. One of the great traditions of Christmas in America goes back only to 1939, when the Montgomery Ward Department Stores asked one of their copywriters, Robert L. May, to write a Christmas story that would be given to customers as a promotional give-away item. May decided to write a children’s story, but he struggled with naming the lead character. He thought of using the name Rollo, but that sounded too cheerful, and he thought of using the name Reginald, but that sounded too British. He finally decided on this name: Rudolph. The story about Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, was reproduced 6 million times by the end of 1946, but it didn’t become truly famous until May’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, rewrote it as a song. In 1949, after being turned down by several major recording artists, Gene Autry gave it a try, and it has become one of the best-selling songs of all time, bested only by Bing Crosby’s White Christmas.

I know that everyone already knows the words to this song, but in case there is someone here who just arrived on the planet yesterday, let me share them with you:

You know Dasher and Dancer
And Prancer and Vixen,
Comet and Cupid
And Donner and Blitzen.
But do you recall
The most famous reindeer of all?

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
Had a very shiny nose
And if you ever saw it
You would even say it glows
All of the other reindeer
Used to laugh and call him names
They never let poor Rudolph
Play in any reindeer games

Then one foggy Christmas Eve
Santa came to say
Rudolph with your nose so bright
Won't you guide my sleigh tonight?
Then all the reindeer loved him
And they shouted out with glee
“Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer
You'll go down in history!"ⁱ

We all love Rudolph, including, I have discovered, Ebenezer Scrooge! Do you know why Scrooge loves Rudolph? Because every buck is dear to him!

As familiar as we all may be with the song, there is much that I recently learned about the true story of Rudolph. In Robert May’s original telling, Rudolph grew up in a loving reindeer family, but other reindeer often teased and taunted him because of his nose. One Christmas Eve, while Santa was making his rounds and stopped at Rudolph’s house, Santa noticed the glow coming from the nose, and due to the fog, Santa enlisted Rudolph for his team. And so Rudolph saved Christmas. What I also learned is that Robert May was very small and very shy as a boy, and as a result he himself had grown up being teased and taunted.ⁱⁱ

Like most good stories, Rudolph’s story actually taps into some very deep and universal dynamics of the way things are in the world, or at least, the way they should be. The story tells us that it is okay to be different. The story tells us that we all have gifts that are useful. The story tells us that we should always be ready to be called upon to serve in an emergency. But I think the real story behind Rudolph goes back much, much further, to the one story in human history that defines all our other stories. This is the story of how God works in the world, using that which seems insignificant, that which seems less than promising, that which seems a bit strange or different, to accomplish his work.

Most of the stories we have tell about the beautiful, the strong, the wealthy, the smart, the popular, the competent. Most of the stories of the world tell about the loud, the proud, the best and the brightest. But the one defining story, the story that God wrote, is about a king who is a baby, a leader who is born to peasants, a teacher who grows up as a craftsman, a prophet who holds forth at parties, a priest whose friends are the least respectable members of society, a savior who cannot or will not save himself.

When Mary, the mother of Jesus, realized what was going to happen to her, she rejoiced because she saw that God was setting the world straight again by turning everything upside down. When Jesus, the Messiah, was born in Bethlehem, God made it perfectly clear that the best and brightest and strongest and most important things are about forgiving, serving, healing, welcoming, believing, hoping, and loving. When you and I worship Jesus, the Christ, as the ultimate revelation of God in the world, we let God know that we finally understand the way things should be in the world, and we let God know that we are willing to shape our lives so that they fit into his story, the story that began the night Christ was born.

Merry Christmas!

ⁱ Lyrics by Robert L. May (copyright 1947) and music by Johnny Marks.
ⁱⁱUrban Legends Reference Pages, 1995-2005, Barbara and David P. Mikkelson, at www.snopes.com/holidays

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