It was a typical mid-December day in suburban Detroit, not something out of a Currier and Ives print nor a Hallmark card. Here there was no bright sunshine glistening off the pristine white snow as jolly people in heavy coats and long scarves glided across an untrammeled field in a horse-drawn sleigh or greeted one another as they made their way up the narrow cobblestone streets of a town in Victorian England with its festive decorations and quaint storefronts.
Instead, beneath a gray, overcast sky, amid a biting wind made all the more penetrating by the dampness, there was a constant stream of cars traversing the wet slush-covered street, running through dark puddles of briny water and splashing the foul liquid onto any pedestrian foolish enough to walk close to the curb instead of staying close to the buildings. Not that there were many pedestrians in a place where the automobile reigns supreme. Piles of dirty snow lined the driveways and parking lots, evidence of the busy folks who mounted plow blades on the front of their pickup trucks to earn a few extra dollars clearing the snow and slush so the cars could access the businesses that lined the busy roadway.
I pulled into a parking place in the fast-food giant’s lot, shut off the engine, turned off the headlights so the battery would not be drained to the point where I’d have to call for road service to give me a jump start in order to get home, opened the door, and stepped into a slushy puddle that filled my shoe and soaked my sock. It certainly wasn’t something that would improve my mood already deprived of “Christmas Spirit” by the crowds in the shopping mall a few miles north. My wife and two small daughters got out on the other side of the car onto bare pavement rendered almost dry by the nearly-constant wind.
Inside, the restaurant was crowded, but not nearly as packed as the mall. People seemed in a slightly better mood here, waiting in lines for their turn to order with some degree of patience instead of the frenzied pushing and shoving of the mall shoppers as they sought to grab the last few items of the season’s hot toy before someone else did. Of course, the place was decorated for the season with ropes of artificial pine needles hanging in swags from the ceiling. The windows were all covered in “appropriate” scenes and symbols rendered in temporary paint, and the loudspeakers blared forth with a selection of secular seasonal songs.
My wife and the girls found an unoccupied booth while I stood in one of the lines until it was my turn to order “meals” (and I use the term very loosely) by the numbers from the sullen, underpaid, overworked teenager at the register who mechanically asked, “Do you want fries with that?” even though they were part of the requested combinations. Upon receiving my tray of alleged food, I stopped at the condiments bar and filled three of the tiny paper cups with ketchup before making my way to the booth that held my family.
The girls were excited by the “festive” (again, I use the term loosely) atmosphere – as children aged five and eight tend to be in mid-December – and chattered on and on about Santa and elves and jingling bells as they engaged in their favorite fast-food-restaurant game of measuring each French fry against the length of plastic straw that poked out from the top of their soft drinks before eating it. The restaurant still offered paper placemats with connect-the-dots pictures meant to keep children occupied which would have been a decent idea if they had included pencils. My daughters were far too creative for that in any event. They turned the placemats over and drew their own pictures using a cold French fry as a brush and the ketchup as their painting medium.
There was a speaker for the sound system directly above our booth which made the alleged music far too loud for me to tune out. Over and over the same few songs played (albeit by different artists or different instrumentation) but one in particular seemed to be in especially “heavy rotation” as the Top-40 DJs of old would have called it, a song about an outcast reindeer with an outsized, illuminated proboscis, the same creature whose likeness decorated no less than four of the windows. The girls sang along to the chorus each time and my ability to ignore the din decreased until it was almost painful to hear yet another rendition.
I’m not sure what moved me to speak nor where the idea came from but during one-too-many repetitions of that accursed song my lips started to move and, in a loud voice, I snarled, “Rudolph, schmudolph, why don’t they ever sing about Wolfgang.” The girls instantly halted their sing-along and stared at me with a look that contained equal parts “has Daddy lost his mind” and “hey, this could be interesting.” My wife looked at me too, her expression containing only the first of those unspoken questions. People in nearby booths stopped eating and talking then turned their attention my way. “Oh great,” I thought, “how do I get out of this?” There seemed to be only one answer: come up with a story and do it fast.
Pausing for a moment as my mind desperately searched for an idea, I found myself speaking again.
Well, you see, reindeer didn’t always know how to fly. In the early days, they were simply the North Pole’s version of horses. Santa didn’t bring toys to good little girls and boys throughout the world, his team of reindeer could only pull his sleigh along the ground so he couldn’t go more than a few miles from his workshop. This bothered him a lot but there simply wasn’t an alternative available. Airplanes had not been invented yet and the winds whipping about were too strong and unpredictable to use airships. Of course, they hadn’t been invented yet either.
The girls stared at me with widened eyes as they waited to hear the next part of the story. Other people seemed to be waiting for the story too. Even the sullen, overworked, and underpaid teenager had stopped asking, “Do you want fries with that?” and was looking at me. I had no idea where to go next but with such an expectant audience, I had no choice but to go on. Fortunately, an idea struck me.
It always gets really, really cold at the North Pole during the winter but the reindeer and the people who lived near there had long before learned how to cope with the frigid weather. One winter, however, it got far colder than usual, far colder than anyone had ever experienced before. It was too cold for people or animals to go outside so they huddled in their houses and lairs, hoping to stay warm enough to survive. In such circumstances, the idea of Christmas was far from anyone’s mind and, for the first time in centuries, Santa knew he couldn’t deliver the huge stack of toys his elves had made, even to the relatively nearby villages. What to do? What to do?
OK, I’d gotten this far, now what? Then, from somewhere deep in my massively-disordered subconscious, an idea fought its way into my consciousness.
It wasn’t cold just at the North Pole, though, the cold air extended down into northern Europe, Siberia, Alaska, Canada, and even Up North. It was the winter when it got so cold Paul Bunyan’s ox, Babe, turned blue and that’s where Wolfgang comes in.
You see, Wolfgang wasn’t the brightest bulb in the string. It might be better to say he lacked good sense because he was no less intelligent than any other reindeer. While all the other reindeer at the North Pole huddled together for warmth amidst the terrible cold, Wolfgang went for a walk intending to go to Santa’s workshop to visit an elf he was friendly with. They say ‘where there’s no sense there’s no feeling’ and although they’re talking about something else, it seemed to be true in Wolfgang’s case.
There’s a big difference between reindeer and oxen beyond the obvious: reindeer are covered with fur to a greater degree than oxen are. The reason should be obvious: reindeer live in a much colder environment than oxen do. That fact is important because it explains why Babe the ox turned blue all over while the only parts of Wolfgang that turned blue were his nose and hooves.
I’d figured out how to tie the Paul Bunyan legend to my story and given a reason why Wolfgang should be seen as different than other reindeer – hence celebrated in story and song like that red-nosed creature – but that didn’t seem to be anywhere near enough. There were a lot of people looking at me, especially my wife and daughters, so I’d better come up with something fast. I stalled for time to give my messy brain and warped sense of humor time to come up with something.
For some reason, Wolfgang didn’t take the most direct route to Santa’s workshop. Instead, his walk took him through a small, dark gap in the piles of snow and ice that lay somewhere to the south. From the North Pole, any direction you head is south so it’s impossible to say exactly where Wolfgang went.
The audience, such as it was, was beginning to show signs of restlessness. I didn’t especially mind if the other folks got bored with my storytelling but Dads are heroes to their small daughters and I dared not fail them. Then I remembered that I’d read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and hoped Douglas Adams would forgive me for misappropriating one of his little tropes. Anything for your daughters, right?
Wherever it was that Wolfgang went, he stepped on something very, very, very cold. Something twice as cold as the frigid air surrounding him. Maybe five times as cold. Maybe TEN times as cold. It was cold enough to make Wolfgang jump up into the air. It was cold enough to make Wolfgang jump very, very high in the air.
Now any self-respecting object in the universe would have the good sense to fall back down to the ground. After all, gravity applies to everything, right? Even something as lacking in good sense as a brick would still have the good sense to fall down to the ground but, as I’ve already told you, Wolfgang was a little lacking in the good sense department. Actually, he was totally lacking in the good sense department. He was so lacking in the good sense department it probably would have to be measured in negative numbers. Lacking the good sense to fall down to the ground like any proper object, Wolfgang fell part way toward the ground then missed!
No one quite knows how Wolfgang managed to miss the ground but miss it he did and when he missed, he kept going and was soon flying through the air, falling again and again and missing the ground every time. Wolfgang thus became the very first flying reindeer!
Almost anyone who thought they saw a flying reindeer would just ignore it. Everyone knows reindeer can’t fly and if you thought you were witnessing a reindeer flying by, you would think you’d simply had a little too much of the rum-spiked eggnog. Not Santa. Santa Claus is someone who has Great Vision and when he saw Wolfgang go flying by, he knew he had the solution to the problem that had vexed him for so many, many years: how to expand his toy-delivery operation beyond the small number of villages within reindeer-sleigh distance of his workshop.
The rest of the story you can probably figure out yourself. Somehow, Santa managed to have Wolfgang teach some other reindeer how to fly. Only eight, nine if you count Rudolph, ever managed to master the trick of falling to the ground and missing it. Eight was enough, however, and the rest is history. Santa had a way to deliver toys to good little girls and boys all over the world.
So I ask you, why do we only hear about Rudolph? Why don’t we ever hear about Wolfgang, perhaps the most important reindeer of all?
I stopped there, pleased with myself for having come up with a way to keep my two girls entertained without having to hear them sing that benighted song. Then I looked around.
My daughters were smiling and the oldest just said, “Oh Daddy!” before they both went back to their artistic endeavors. My wife had turned her attention to her cheeseburger, ignoring me. The people in the next booth silently got up, carefully sidled past our booth, then made a break for the door. Other people quietly moved backwards, away from us. The sullen, overworked, underpaid teenager went back to being sullen, overworked, and underpaid.
And that damned song came over the speaker again.