Reindeer and Christmas – the facts and the folklore from 1823 New York
Reindeer have been woven into the festive fabric of Christmas for nearly two centuries. It all began in 1823 with A Visit from Saint Nicholas, the poem better known today as ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.
This was the first documented mention of eight flying reindeer drawing a sleigh, and they sprang from the (then anonymous) author’s imagination straight into the hearts of the New York public – and beyond.
And there they remain, largely unchanged, alongside the later addition of Rudolph, the ninth and most famous reindeer.
Bizarrely, Rudolph’s unusual nose might actually be more fact than fiction. Some reindeer do indeed have a red nose due to an exceptionally high concentration of blood vessels, giving their velvety muzzles a distinctive pink tinge.
This dense capillary network helps regulate body temperature, warming each breath of freezing Arctic air as it enters the nostrils and helping a hot reindeer cool down after strenuous exercise – and pulling a sleigh would certainly qualify.
Uniquely, both male (bull) and female (cow) reindeer have antlers but the males shed theirs at the end of the mating season, in early December.
Their heads are bare by Christmas, so all of Santa’s antlered reindeer must in fact be female.
You won’t find any wild reindeer in Sussex, nor at the North Pole – which is on the constantly-shifting sea ice of the Arctic Ocean – but the nearest herd is closer than you might think.
British reindeer were hunted to extinction some 800 years ago but were reintroduced to the Cairngorms in 1952, and 150 of them still roam the Scottish mountainsides today.
Closer to home, fallow deer are the next best thing. The males (bucks) sport impressive antlers at this time of year, which have a distinctive palmate shape like a hand with the fingers extended.
With the rush of the autumn rut now
There has been very little light amid the drudgery and darkness of this year, meaning that we have tended to hold onto the highlights whenever they arise.
The bright spots such as doorstep clapping, the fundraising feats of Captain Sir Tom Moore and the discovery of a vaccine will feature prominently in the review of the year pieces in every national newspaper in the coming weeks because they were genuinely the only positives for many.
It is little wonder then that more streets than ever appear to be lit up like the Golden Mile in the run-up to Christmas, in an attempt rouse the spirits of the immediate neighbourhood. We have joined in with the fun, festooning our downstairs windows with the finest flashing lights that the Far East has to offer. It had crossed my mind to adopt the full crazy middle-aged dad at Christmas mindset and cover every brick of our home with lights and our roof with over, bucks will spend the winter in small bachelor herds of five to ten deer, which just happens to be about the right number to pull a sleigh. illuminated reindeer until I remembered that, with my track record of gross ineptitude for anything involving DIY, it was highly likely that would result in me going the way of Chevy Chase in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Not only would it most likely end in a trip to the local A&E but obsessing about how much extra thousands of little lights would add to the electricity bill would keep me awake at night.
There are other ways of putting a smile on the faces of others at this time of year and while I refuse to wear a wacky jumper under any circumstances, I do have a penchant for dressing up in December, with the now threadbare Ruldoph onesie I have owned since the days when I could still see my feet making way for the biggest elf ’s costume they make. The latest addition to my festive wardrobe got its first public outing last weekend when I assumed the role of Papa Elf for my son’s school’s inaugural outdoor, socially distanced, Santa’s Grotto. Giving up my ‘free’ time is something I have done regularly for the past seven years as a member of the school’s fundraising committee. Some would describe me as a busybody although I prefer communityminded and, like my fellow fundraisers,
I am motivated by a desire to help the school pay for equipment that the allocated budget won’t cover. Despite the financial trauma that a significant proportion of the population has suffered this year, the recent online efforts of our little charity have been incredibly well-supported by the community we serve. The grotto was our first physical event since just before the March lockdown and was three months in the pipeline. Planning for a Covid-era event requires logistical skills that have always been out of my reach, but thankfully others do and we were able to map out an event that both compiled to the current rules and gave understandably cautious parents peace of mind.
The days where little Rocky or Cher could clamber onto the man in the red suit’s knee were pretty much consigned to history some time ago, but now you really have to keep your distance.
Having it outdoors in a small wooded area within the school grounds always seemed like the sensible option but there was genuine uncertainty about how popular it would prove to be. The answer is very, with demand outdoing availability.
With hindsight, we should’ve twigged that families largely confined to their homes for much of the year, would want a bit of stardust sprinkled over the end of a year which will forever be remembered as painfully joyless. This desire for a slice of magic was evident not only in a desire by parents to volunteer their time and wear silly hats but by the look on the faces of school-age children when they received an early present from Lapland’s most famous resident. We knew that we could rely on the Christmas Spirit to help us salvage something from 2020.