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Home , Johnny Marks

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Luke 2:1-14

The year 1938 was another desperate period for Americans living in the Great Depression. But for Robert May it was a year of personal tragedy. His young wife, Evelyn, was very sick and would die before year’s end. His meager salary with Montgomery Wards barely paid for food and rent, let alone the medical bills due to Evelyn’s illness. The only joy in his life was the couple’s four-year-old daughter, Barbara. Each night he took his little girl into his arms and together they took comfort by making up stories fantasy and hope. Drawing on his own awkward childhood and fairy tales such as The Ugly Duckling, Robert created a story about a little reindeer that faced difficulty and insurmountable odds. The story was so popular with young Barbara that Robert decided to share it with his co- workers. At a party on a cold Chicago evening, Robert May warmed the hearts of his friends with the first public telling of a misfit reindeer named Rudolph. The employees loved it, and Robert’s boss, Mr. Avery, wanted to share the tale with children everywhere. He purchased the story from Robert and the following year each child who visited at Montgomery Wards was given a copy of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. In fact, over 2 million copies were given away that year alone. Then, in 1946 after 6 million copies had been distributed, Mr. Avery did something extremely generous; he gave back to Robert May all publishing rights to the story, making Robert a wealthy man. By this time, Robert had remarried and his new brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, asked if he could make the story of Rudolph into a song. Johnny had a way with words and music, so he retold the story of Rudolph with simple lyrics and a catchy tune. Attempts were made to get famous singers like , to record it, but no one wanted to take a chance on a children’s Christmas song. That is, until Ina Autry, the wife of movie star and singing-cowboy heard it and persuaded her husband to record it in 1949. The tune, like the reindeer, went down in history, and soon became the second best-selling Christmas song of all-time, just behind White Christmas. 1 As Paul Harvey used to say, “That my friend, is the rest of the story.”

What does this red-nosed reindeer have to do with the real Christmas story found in Luke 2 telling us about Mary having a baby in the city of ? Some would say not much. In fact, there is a great fear among some parents in blending these stories together so much that children can’t distinguish between the truth of Christmas and the fanciful tales of Santa Claus and reindeer like Rudolph. While I suppose there can be some confusion, if proper instruction and guidance is absent, I don’t think we have to protect our children from all the popular stories of Christmas which add delight to children everywhere. In fact, I believe we would do well to think about the ways in which the narratives of the non-Christian icons of our major Holy Days do in some sense mirror elements of the Gospel story. These omnipresent icons of Christmas wonder like Santa and Rudolph give us unique opportunities to capture teachable moments with our children and instill in them lessons about God and that last a lifetime. Kathleen O. Chesto writes about her family Christmas experiences in a book promoting family-centered intergenerational education. Every season they would do what some of us are doing this year, reading an Advent devotion, lighting a candle, singing a song, and reading Scripture. The children took turns choosing a Jesus song each night. One particular night it was Beck’s turn to choose. She was five at the time and she chose “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” Mama Kathleen patiently explained this was not a Jesus song. She had probably gotten confused because people sang Rudolph at Christmas. Becky insisted it was a Jesus song, but couldn’t explain what that meant. As her eyes filled with tears, Kathleen’s husband pointed out that she was being foolish and it just didn’t matter. Anything could be a prayer and of course they would sing it. Kathleen listened to the words more closely this time: “All of the other reindeer use to laugh and call him names. They never let poor Rudolph join in any reindeer games.” He really was an outcast, excluded from his own kind. It made Kathleen think of the Suffering Servant songs of Isaiah, you know the ones that say the Messiah would “be despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering” (Is 53:3). And how did this Messiah come on ? Was it not as a light unto the Gentiles bringing them the gift of salvation? Again Isaiah prophesied, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Is 9:2). So Kathleen turned excitedly to her five year old daughter and said, “You meant that Jesus suffered too and he comes as a great light on Christmas.” “Yes, Mommy,” said Becky delighted that her mother had finally overcome her ignorance. Our children can teach us many things about God if we only listen. If we let them start in their world and reveal what they are seeing, then we can help them interpret that world. Then their world and ours become great learning centers about God and his matchless love for us. So what lesson can we learn from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? I think the main lesson is that even misfits, those that are despised and rejected by their peers can be used for the advancement of God’s kingdom. The story begins with Rudolph’s birth. His father Donner is ashamed of Rudolph’s red nose and tries to cover it up with mud. As he grows up he goes out to play in the annual reindeer games and all is going well, until his secret is revealed. (Take a look. Start: when he flies. Stop: when he walks away crying)

Luke’s account of Christmas The Christmas story as told by Luke depicts the scandal of God choosing the most unlikely people and places to bring salvation to the world. Notice the misfit characters that God chooses to carry out the most important event in the history of the world, the incarnation. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is an unwed teenager. She’s not old enough to vote or drive a car. And what could be more misfitting than a mother who’s a virgin. No one had ever thought such a thing was possible and they certainly would’ve believe her if she tried to explain what happened to her. She is married to a man named Joseph, who was well-respected, until he got connected to this girl pregnant with a son and yet claiming she had never been with a man. Mary made Joseph a misfit. Their son claimed to be a king, and yet neither of his parents came from royalty. Most kings are kings at birth. You are born into royalty. Mary and Joseph were anything but royal. Then, on the night that Jesus was born, he was welcomed into the world, not as a king should be. There were no diplomats or kings to bring him gifts. (It would be years, later, when the magi from the east arrived at his house with their bag full of goodies!) The night of Jesus’ birth brought to his cradle shepherds who had been out watching their flock by night. There are no showers in the fields with sheep. It’s a dirty smelly job. They were considered dishonest men by most Jews. They didn’t mind stealing a sheep if necessary and grazing on land that wasn’t theirs if they could get by with it. The first persons outside the mother and father to see Jesus were not royalty, diplomats, or for goodness sake, they weren’t even family. They were dirty, smelly shepherds who had left their sheep to take a look at this child declared a Savior. The characters of the Christmas story are more like Rudolph than Roosevelt. And the places of the Christmas story are certainly not fit for a king. Quirinius was the governor of Syria, but Jesus wasn’t born in Syria. Caesar Augustus was the emperor of Rome, but Jesus wouldn’t be born in the capital city. Joseph is from Nazareth, a town not even mentioned in the Old Testament. The only person in the NT who mentions Nazareth says of it, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46). He is to travel to Judea, to Bethlehem. Judea, now there’s a fine country for you. Over the last 1000 years it had been dominated and occupied by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans. These folks had more national anthems than we have Christmas carols. And what of Bethlehem? Even the people who speak fondly of it called it the least city in Judea, and we already have listed the attributes of Judea. And if all of those places are unlikely places for the birth of a king, I’ll ask you to zoom in on your Google map just a bit closer. If you zoom in to the actual location of the birth you see it’s in a disgusting barn meant to house animals. You know the story, there was no room in the inn so Mary took the baby, wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, which is a nice word to describe a feeding trough. Here is the king of the world lying in a trough with left over grain that spilled out of the mouths of sheep as they were eating their dinner.

Our Glitz and Glamour A little over a week ago I attended the Koinonia Christmas party and graciously received a gift of Mike Huckabee’s just published A Simple Christmas. In the introduction of the book he describes how he would’ve sent his Son into the world if he had been God. As one who has been involved in prominent inaugurations and political campaigns, he knows something about drawing a crowd and getting a message out. Of God’s entrance into the world he writes: “An event of this magnitude calls for pulling out all the stops. I’d hire the best caterers and some great bands, get the staging just right, and pick a venue that would be impossible for the press to ignore – maybe Times Square or the National Mall…. Of course, we’d do worldwide satellite feeds and set up remote viewing sites everywhere. There would be various levels of sponsorship, product placements, and of course, naming rights. It would make the Super Bowl look like a Little League game!2 I suppose most of the world would expect that kind of glitz to usher in the Son of God. And maybe that instinct for glitz is what drives the commercialization of Christmas today. We missed putting on the Ritz for the first Christmas, so we want to make sure we flood the Christmas season with lots of lights, great shopping sprees, parties with all the right people, and singing by famous celebrities. We can’t imagine something this important not being surrounded with important people and places. And yet the original Christmas story is the very opposite of glamorous. It was filled with misfitting characters: teenage virgin mothers, suspicious young fathers, dirty field hands, and smelly barns. It was the greatest understatement you could possibly imagine for the greatest birth the world would ever know. And what does all that mean? What does it teach us about God? Perhaps, we are learning from the get-go that God is going to be among the misfits, the poor, the lowly, the outcasts, the ones humble enough to welcome God’s presence with nothing more than a willing heart and an obedient spirit. Among these misfits God would begin his life on earth. Into their hands he would lie as a helpless baby with no more strength than two lungs that could suck in oxygen and two lips that could suckle milk from a mother. And if that’s the kind of entrance God makes at the beginning of his life on earth, perhaps it’s the kind of entrance he wants to make in each of us. He doesn’t much care for the big events we can pull off, though there’s certainly nothing wrong with throwing a good party. *I think what God wants is a willing heart that says “Yes” like Joseph and Mary said “Yes” to a strange proposition. * I think God wants a conversion in our spirits from a Scrooge-like stinginess to a radical generosity. He wants us to see that the wonderful life isn’t in the pursuit of power and possessions but in the simple sharing of love and serving others. * He wants to offer up to him our red noses, and white knuckles, and blue feelings to be used for his glory and honor. * He wants us to say “Yes” like Rudolph when he calls for us to give our lives to him and empty them into his eternal care. That’s what God wants from misfits like you and me this Christmas. You see, we’re all misfits in some way or other aren’t we? We come to church on the Sunday before Christmas with more baggage than a sleigh filled with toys. And yet God wants us to come to the barn like shepherds and bend down at the trough and worship the Savior of the world. We may not have a red nose that glows but we may have acne that’s embarrassing, or a weight problem, or a divorce problem, or a drinking problem, or a debt problem, or some other kind of obsessive behavior we try to keep under wraps. The Savior is for us. Like Mary and Joseph and the shepherds, and, if you don’t mind it, like Rudolph with his nose so bright, God wants us to say “Yes” to his call. He wants us to receive Jesus as our Savior and Lord. And if we can’t guide a sleigh by night perhaps we can pull a sled for some neighborhood kids who don’t have a dad. We can let our light shine for him so that others may know that misfits can be used by God. We can do something as simple as bowing down to offer a prayer of adoration for a helpless baby lying in a manger. And if we can find our way to this dirty little feeding trough where all sorts of misfits show up, we just might experience Christmas like never before. Let me show you a picture of it. It comes from a book called Baskets of Silver, written by Dr. C. Roy Angell, who was for many years pastor of the Central Baptist Church in Miami. It is about a friend of Dr. Angell’s who came to him after Christmas and said, “Roy, I’ve got to tell you about my Christmas! It was the greatest Christmas I ever had!” Shortly before Christmas the man’s brother had given him a big, new car – a Packard. One afternoon he came out of his office to get in the car and found a dirty little boy, a street urchin, walking around it and touching it and staring at it in admiration. When the man put the key in the door lock, the boy came around to the driver’s side and asked him what a car like that cost. The man replied that he didn’t know, because his brother had given to him. “You mean,” said the boy, “your brother gie it to you, and it didn’t cost you nothing?” “That’s right,” said the man. “My brother gie it to me and it didn’t cost me nothing. The boy appeared lost in thought. “I wist –“ he said. The man knew what the boy wished. He was going to say he wished he had a brother who would give him a car. But what the boy said jarred the man all the way to his toes: “I wist,” said the boy, “I could be a brother like that.” “What did you say?” asked the man in astonishment. “I said,” repeated the boy, “I wist I could be a brother like that.” The man felt confused and ashamed. He asked the boy to go for a ride in his car. The boy demurred. He was dirty, he said, and would get the seats dirty. “You might be dirty on the outside,” said the man, “but you’re mighty clean on the inside. You will do my automobile good. Get in.” Before they had gone very far, the boy said, “Mister would you mind driving in front of my house?” The man smiled, and followed the boy’s instructions on how to get to his house. He thought he knew what the boy wanted: to have his family and friends see him getting out of a big car. But again he was wrong. When they got to the boy’s house – an apartment in an old brick building – the boy asked him to wait a minute, and disappeared up a flight of stairs. In a short time he came down again, carrying a small boy whose tiny legs hung limply from the hips. He set the boy down on the bottom step, sat down beside him, and put an arm around him. Then he pointed to the car and said, “There she is Buddy, just like I told you. His brother gie it to him, and it didn’t cost him a cent, and some day I’m gonna gie you one.” The man, who heard this from the car, climbed out and went over to the boys. “So that’s the reason,” he said, “you wanted to be a brother like that.” “Yes,” said the boy. “You see, the store windows are full of pretty things, and I try to remember them, but I can’t tell him about them very well, and some day I’m gonna gie him a car so he can see them himself.” “We won’t wait until then,” said the man. “I’m going to put you both in the car and let you see them today, and I’m going to let you pick out anything you want, and I’ll buy it for you.” The man did as he promised. And on Christmas Eve, he put up a for them and played Santa Claus. It was the grandest Christmas he had ever experienced. 3

Conclusion Two thousand years ago God entered the world as a helpless baby, carried, cared for, and cherished by a bunch of misfits. Today he still enters into the hearts and lives of sinners and saints, misfits and miscreants, teenagers and twitter junkies to bring salvation and light to the world. It’s not something that can be put in Santa’s sleigh or brought to you by Rudolph. You’ll find it wherever humble knees are bowed and obedient hearts are saying “Yes” to God. Why don’t you bow down and say “Yes” to God? It will be the greatest Christmas you ever experienced.

1 The story of the creation and development of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is told in many places. The best source I discovered in my research came from AdventScripts.pdf which contains a wonderful collection of stories about the origins of many from the Bible and the secular world. 2 Mike Huckabee, A Simple Christmas, (New York: Sentinel Publishing, 2009), p. xxi. 3 C. Roy Angell, Baskets of Silver, (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1955), 96-98.