A suspiciously skinny, peeved Santa meets with his elves and reindeer team, from the 1964 Rankin-Bass special

In my original plans for this post I wanted to generate some names for new members of Santa’s flying reindeer team, but instead I went down a rabbit hole of Christmas canon.

For example, much of our (meaning American) ideas about Santa Claus came from poet Clement Moore’s work “A Visit from St. Nicholas” which was published in 1823 in The Sentinel, a newspaper based in Troy, NY. This was an age in which printed media was more regional and publishers had more freedom to do what they wanted. The papers then were not strictly for news and often published fiction as well, functioning in the same way magazines would later. They were also less picky about things like authorship and copyright. A friend of Moore’s had sent the poem to them and apparently they printed it without Moore’s permission or even paying him. In the following decades it was widely circulated, and reprinted, throughout the country, again without Moore’s permission or even his byline. But apparently that was OK with him… he was a professor and didn’t want to be associated with the plebian verses, which he had written originally for his own children. You can read more about the original poem, and its controversy, here. 

In the poem Moore posits a team of eight reindeer for Santa, in vaguely alliterative-sounding pairs that make for effective rhyming, especially later when the 1949 Christmas tune Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was composed by Johnny Marks and released in a gentle, genial version by cowboy star Gene Autry.  It was that song that cemented the eight … er, nine… deer into the American consciousness. (Despite what some people say, the song was not inspired by a red-nosed drunk named Rudy, at least from what I’ve found.)

Rudolph, of course, was conceived earlier, in 1939, by retail whiz Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward, which wanted an original Christmas story for a booklet they planned to give away to customers. (Fun fact: he was songwriter Johnny Marks’ brother-in-law.) Some sites say Rudolph was written for an advertising campaign, but the truth was, it was more of a promotional one and a cheaper alternative than buying new books from publishers, which is what they had been doing on previous Christmases. So another myth busted.

Back to the original team. I couldn’t find any information about why Clement Moore named the reindeer as he did. But some creative minds have attempted to hang some personalities onto them according to their names.

Dasher: Athletic and quick out of the gate

Dancer: Graceful

Prancer: Proud and showy

Vixen: Cunning and quick like a little fox

Comet: Fast and dramatic

Cupid: Loving and full of joy

Donner: Thunder, loud

Blitzen: Lightning, like a flash

In the 1828 Moore poem, the last two were Dunder and Blixem, which were Dutch words for thunder and lightning. They were changed to Donder and Blitzen in a revised 1844 version, reflecting the German spellings, and Donder later still to Donner which is the more modern German spelling. Not sure why Moore made the jump from Dutch to German.

A curious exclusion was the reindeer’s gender. As a child I always assumed they were male-female pairs: Dasher (M) and Dancer (F); Prancer (M) and Vixen (F); Comet (M) and Cupid (F); Donner (M) and Blitzen (F). That’s just the way it was in the world: male and female, and the female-sounding names were obviously so, especially Vixen, which is a female fox, as a nanny is a female goat. But others didn’t think so. The reindeer team of the 1964 Rankin-Bass Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is all male, even the effete Dancer and Cupid. Even in more recent movies, like a 1998 Rudolph movie, present them as all male, even Vixen, which is just… awkward.

But… did you another writer created his own Santa reindeer team?