You know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. Comet and Cupid and Donder and Blitzen. You may even recall the most famous reindeer of all. The one with the nose so bright, guiding Santa’s sleigh at night.
But there is one reindeer of whom you’ve certainly never heard. And there are several folks at the North Pole who’d like to keep it that way.
His name is Ruprecht. He’s Rudolph’s brother.
###
Rudolph wasn’t the first offspring of Donder and Mrs. Donder. Three years prior to Rudolph’s arrival, the couple learned they were expecting, incidentally when Mrs. Donder was not yet Mrs. Donder. Following nuptials that occurred at the behest of the future Mrs. Donder’s father and his Winchester side-by-side, the two welcomed a strapping, 17-pound bull. A normally prideful moment, the birth was their first glimpse into the irregularities their particular DNA combination was capable of producing.
Ruprecht had what could be termed, “a significant birth defect.”
“What is that?” Donder exclaimed upon seeing it.
He had a red ass.
Not a rash. Not rosacea. Not a bad sunburn. His ass glowed red. Like a light bulb. A big, damn, butt-shaped light bulb. If you’ve never had a child born with neon hiney, it’s tough to know how you’d react.
“Seriously…what the fuck is that?” Donder repeated.
Nevertheless, the two loved him. Or his front half anyway. They did their best to protect him, taking him to the park when no one was there or showing off pictures only taken from the neck up.
But when he got older, they had to send him out into the world, out to reindeer school. As expected, the other deer harassed and teased him to no end. Ruprecht, soon suffering from crippling self-esteem issues, would return day after day, begging his parents to home-school him. But this was long before home-schooling acceptance, and the Donder’s didn’t wish to be known as “that family.”
So they shoved Ruprecht out the door every morning, telling him to be proud of his “specialness.” If he did so, eventually the other deer would come to accept him.
And thus, we learn that reindeer parents are as idiotic as human parents.
Ruprecht never learned to be at ease in his own skin. Perhaps it was the relentless mental abuse he endured from his peers. Perhaps it was the fact that his parents often encouraged him to wear “pants” to cover his shiny birthmark, a traumatic experience for any four-legged animal due to its uncanny visual similarity to a diaper. Perhaps it was the specter constantly looming over him that his backside offered hunters an unmissable target. Or perhaps it was the inconvenience of knowing that every time he took a dump, the frozen landscape illuminated like a crimson strobe light was going off.
“Santa, dear, pull the sleigh over. I think we’re getting pulled over by the North Pole PD again,” Mrs. Claus mistakenly said one day as a nearby Ruprecht went about his daily routine.
It wasn’t long until Ruprecht, seeking escape, fell in with the wrong crowd. He started skipping flight practice to smoke in the woods. He got his nose pierced. He broke into Santa’s Workshop and nipped a bottle of rare Russo-Baltique Vodka. The final straw came when he wrapped up a pile of polar bear crap and sneaked it in Santa’s delivery bag. A young boy named Greg in Arizona never forgave Santa.
Despite the pain it caused them, Donder and Mrs. Donder had no choice. They simply couldn’t have such a destructive influence around the lair, particularly with recent news they had received. So, they put their hooves down and kicked him out. It would be good for him, they reasoned. What they really meant was, it would be good for them.
Ruprecht was forced to survive on his own. After bumming his way from buddy’s couch to buddy’s couch for a couple seasons, he got a gig as a roadie in charge of lighting for a North Pole heavy metal band named Silver Hells. They featured a snowman who could play guitar and an elf who formerly sang in a choir. That opportunity didn’t last long.
“Hey mate, the red is cool and all. But seeing as the band is named Silver Hells, maybe we could use a little variety,” the axe player explained shortly before firing Ruprecht and melting for the season.
About the time he was getting his walking papers, Ruprecht learned he had a little brother. And when he heard he suffered from a similar affliction, he set a course for home, determined to help the lad cope with the troubling consequences of messed-up reindeer DNA. Determined to be everything his parents weren’t…supportive, helpful, compassionate.
But by the time Ruprecht blew back into town to connect with his younger sibling, Rudolph had already taken the lead on the sleigh team and used his nose to cut through the murk of the foggiest Christmas Eve ever. He was a hero. He was on his way to going down in history. He was North Pole royalty. And much to the chagrin of the faithful Clarise, who had risked her own life to rescue his, the doe population was lining up to hang out with him.
“It’s pretty cool being me,” Rudolph told his old chum, Fireball, before excusing himself to chat with a doe who was wearing a black leather bow atop her head.
And now that the spotlight was all his, Rudolph had no intention of sharing it. Now that the medal of honor hung around his neck, Rudolph had no intention of tarnishing it. So, when Ruprecht waltzed into his life, with his electric booty, his less-than-stellar reputation and his offer to “be there for him,” Rudolph did something nobody saw coming:
He mocked Ruprecht. Rudolph mocked his own brother – his own flesh and blood. Called him a bastard, side-show freak. It’s one thing to have a blinking beak, Rudolph quipped…but a beaming butt?
“That’s just weird,” Rudolph said.
Ruprecht was humiliated. Again. And Ruprecht was cast out. Again. As he turned a rosy tail to Christmas Town, he thought long and hard. Mostly about the lengths the Donders went for his little brother…the drastic measures taken to avoid losing another son. How the Donders desperately ventured out into the worst recorded storm in North Pole history to rescue that selfish little punk, a little punk who ran away to hang with a bunch of god-forsaken misfits. How the Donders not only confronted the dreaded Bumble Snow Monster but even took that walking, toothless, furry garbage dump of a beast in and gave him a job. How when the snowflakes finally cleared, there was Rudolph, the prodigal son, now a coddled celebrity, given all the benefits in life Ruprecht wasn’t, enjoying the taste of that slaughtered fatted calf.
“Hypocrites. The whole frickin’ lot of ‘em,” Ruprecht bemoaned.
And where did that leave Ruprecht? It left him homeless, eating moldy oats he found under a rotting walrus carcass in a dumpster outside the elf barracks. Wondering where his search party was. Wondering where his second chance was. Wondering why there was no song with cute lyrics about going down in history for him. Wondering why he was cursed with a glowing appendage that always seemed to shine a light on where he’d been, rather than where he was going.
It was enough to make a reindeer consider wandering into a clearing during open season.
###
In the years that followed, residents of Christmas Town concocted dozens of theories and rumors about Ruprecht’s fate. Some say he made his way to Amsterdam, settling in a particularly seedy part of town. Others say he developed a passion for watching ice hockey at small-town rinks and inadvertently began the tradition of setting off red lights when goals were scored. Yet others claim he accidentally met his demise when a drunken gold and silver prospector tossed a mining pick high into the air and watched as it sailed straight down into Ruprecht’s skull. To be fair, that last rumor was spread whenever someone in Christmas Town died, and usually that rumor was spread by a drunken gold and silver prospector.
So, what really happened to Ruprecht? Even this narrator doesn’t know the answer to that. Not for sure, anyway.
But this narrator does know about another incident, where Santa was pulled over one snowy Christmas Eve, somewhere over Manitoba, by the friendly folks at North American Aerospace Defense Command. NORAD, for short. That sleigh was old, you know. It hadn’t been updated in decades. It was in violation of so many aviation laws.
“We’ll have to impound it. Until it can be made fit for air travel.”
What was Santa to do? It’s not like repair shops were open. Not in the middle of Christmas Eve.
Remarkably, Santa did not fail to deliver a single present that night.
And so, perhaps, one silent, holy night, after the kids have been tucked away, dreaming of sugar plums…or more appropriately, expensive cellular devices…take a look out the window. Through the night mist, see if you can spy Rudolph’s nose – the one attached to his giant, egotistical head. If you do spot it, don’t dart off to bed, fearful of being passed by. Break the rules and watch a bit longer. See if you can spot the sleigh slowing down as it lands on a neighbor’s rooftop. When it comes to a halt, take a good, hard look at the back. At the taillights – the set curiously shaped like a round reindeer rump. And as you toddle off to bed, maybe…just maybe…hum a few bars of that beloved Christmas carol, replacing a few choice words in honor of Ruprecht. And rest easy, knowing Santa won’t get rear-ended by a 747.
An Irreverent Christmas Backstory
By Tom Witkowski
9 Circles Fiction
Photo Credit: Sebastien Goldberg
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