REINDEER GAMES

Imagine a single snowflake—albeit a giant one that encompasses 196,880+ dimensions. That’s the word-picture used by Mark Ronan to describe “the monster,” an extraordinarily large, complex numerical entity discovered by mathematicians in their hunt for mathematical symmetries, and one that may shed light on the deep structure of the cosmos itself.¹ I am no mathematician, but I can appreciate how the exploration of symmetries and singularities may yield unexpected insights into reality. Here I offer such a study, swaddled in Christmas wrapping. It’s not about a math monster but flying reindeer.

Just as the United States political system rests on two foundational documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, so the American folklore of Christmas has its roots in two poetic tales. The first is “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (“‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”), published anonymously in New York state in 1823 and traditionally ascribed to seminary professor Clement C. Moore. The second is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, a 1939 versified children’s book written by Chicago copywriter Robert L. May at the behest of his Montgomery Ward manager, who wanted a new product to sell to holiday shoppers, and later adapted into a hit song by May’s brother-in-law Johnny Marks. The first poem introduced airborne yuletide reindeer into the popular imagination, while the second debuted “the most famous reindeer of all.” May deliberately patterned Rudolph on “Visit,” echoing its anapestic tetrameter, mimicking its opening and closing lines, and rehearsing the names of its reindeer while foregrounding a new, red-nosed addition to St. Nick’s sleigh team. One could fold the backstories of these two tales into a historical narrative of American westward expansion (from a former middle colony to the Midwest) or of the secularization and commercialization of Christmas (from a seminary prof to a department store’s ad man). Instead, I want to observe what these two tales themselves tell us about the reindeer: their symmetries, their singularities, and what they may show us about the deep structure of reality.

“Visit” acquaints us with eight reindeer: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner (or Donder; originally Dunder) and Blitzen (originally Blixem). The first symmetry to notice is that they divide evenly according to the spatial associations of their names. Deer One through Four carry names that indicate light-footed motion along the ground: to dash, dance, prance, and flee furtively like a fox. Complementarily, the names of Deer Five through Eight refer to movement through the sky: the shooting of a comet, the winging of a cupid, and the shaking and striking of thunder and lightning (the English translations of Deer Seven and Eight’s German/originally Dutch monikers). This twofold division of the reindeer’s names matches the stages of their approach in the poem: unlike contemporary depictions of Santa’s sleigh as an aircraft that makes frequent landings on rooftops, in “Visit” the sleigh and its team arrive “out on the lawn” through the “new-fallen snow,” then “mount to the sky” to rise from “the top of the porch . . . to the top of the wall” and finally “up to the house-top.”

Secondly, the rhythmic qualities of the names themselves unfold multiple symmetries. Dancer and Prancer rhyme perfectly, while the Comet/Donner and Vixen/Blitzen couplets are slant-rhymed. There’s consonance in the beginnings and endings of Dasher, Dancer, and Donner, as well as between Comet and Cupid. Thirdly, gender symmetry marks these names: although in English, most are gender neutral,² the singular exceptions are Vixen, denoting a female fox, and Cupid, referencing a male godling. Finally, there’s a cryptic parallel between these reindeer in their poetic context and the cosmology of presocratic philosopher Empedocles. Cupid personifies love, while a vixen connotes strife. Empedocles theorized that Love and Strife were the attractive and repulsive cosmic forces that influenced nature and its four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. “Visit” features not only Love and Strife but also earth and air (see above on the spatiality of the reindeer’s sobriquets and itinerary), fire (in Comet’s flaming name and St. Nick’s lit pipe), and frozen water (the “new-fallen snow”). Empedocles would be pleased indeed!

Rudolph, Rudolph, burning bright in the forests of the night, what impertinent hoof or snoot dare shame these cheerful symmetries? With the advent of Rudolph, singularity intrudes upon symmetry. His name sounds like none of the others and uniquely inscribes a predator-prey paradox. It means “Famous Wolf”—an irony given its bearer is “the most famous reindeer of all.”³ He disrupts the others’ spatial, gendered, and even cosmological harmonies. No wonder all the other reindeer mocked and snubbed him. His nose was but the tip of the iceberg, its alarm-red hue the warning signal that here was a disturber of the status quo. He was the odd reindeer out, and even when at last he joins the sleigh team, he is the odd reindeer in: paired with no harness-mate, he stands out alone in front, a singular ninth reindeer lighting and leading the way to save Christmas.

In suffering bullying from his fellow creatures, the buck named “Famous Wolf” starts out an underdog (or underdeer!). He embodies his creator’s own sense of growing up an outcast who was teased for his Jewish identity and prominent nose. Rudolph’s vindication in the eyes of his reindeer peers enacts May’s own success: like Rudolph and through Rudolph, “[he]’ll go down in history!” Creator and creation’s common trope of humiliation and exaltation in turn recapitulates a pattern in the sacred literature of May’s ancestors. To take but two examples: among the sons of Jacob and the sons of Jesse, respectively, Joseph and David endure brotherly derision and community exclusion (Gen. 37, 39; 1 Sam. 16:5–11; 17:28; 18–27) before rising to positions of singular authority as saviors of their people. The symmetries of their (and many others’) shared narrative arcs point toward a hidden figure at the heart of reality, a “monster” entity that fulfills them all . . .

one that incarnates the Creator within the creation in a journey through humiliation to exaltation . . .

one that, like the reindeer called “Famous Wolf,” unites noble power with humble service as the Lamb called “Lion of the tribe of Judah” (Rev. 5:5–6) . . .

one that, like Rudolph, brings not only social and cosmic disturbance but also saving light to the world at Christmastide.

In the senescence of the year came Christ the reindeer. Dare we utter such a line? Or is it too kitschy, too trivializing? Without careful handling, it certainly may be. But let me close with two justifications. First, vignettes like “Visit” about altruism toward children and tales like Rudolph’s of the redemption of misfits rely for their popularity on cultural values that, however superficially secularized, derive historically from the gospel of Jesus Christ.⁴ To link such secular stories with the gospel is to reveal their animating source. Lastly, J. R. R. Tolkien, himself a spinner of Christmas fantasies, taught that all our myths gesture toward the true story of the gospel, which in turn may redeem and hallow them. As Tolkien put it, “God is the Lord, of angels, and of men—and of elves.”⁵ Not least of these is that “right jolly old elf” St. Nicholas with his flying reindeer . . . even and especially the red-nosed one.

1. Mark Ronan, Symmetry and the Monster: One of the Greatest Quests of Mathematics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
2. In German, though, Donner and Blitzen are masculine common nouns.
3. Vixen provides only a partial parallel, as foxes don’t typically hunt reindeer.
4. Be it recalled that in the most famous Rudolph movie of all, Rankin/Bass Productions’ Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer TV special (1964), Rudolph visits the Island of Misfit Toys and brings about their redemption by Santa Claus. On the evangelization of Western values generally, see Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (New York: Basic Books, 2019); on the effect of the West’s Christianization—and dechristianization—on the valuing of women and children, see Nadya Williams, Mothers, Children, and the Body Politic: Ancient Christianity and the Recovery of Human Dignity (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2024).
5. J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Tolkien Reader (New York: Ballantine, 1966), 87–90 (quotation from 89). For his contribution to children’s yuletide literature, see J. R. R. Tolkien, The Father Christmas Letters, ed. Baillie Tolkien (London: Allen & Unwin, 1976).