Tag: Rudolph

Working on ‘Son of Hel’

You’ll have to excuse my long absence. At work, we’re gearing up for the end of summer and the coming school, so I’ve been taking my work home with me at night.

I should probably be working right now, but instead I’m continuing my preparations of the world bible for Son of Hel, my next novel, which will feature Krampus, a reindeer with a radioactive nose, and a war between elves.

This will be, as far as I know, the first “___ Saves Christmas” story that attempts an honest harmonization of extant Santa Clause legends without also attempting to distance the legendary figure from the historical saint.

The cast of the story keeps growing as I discover more Christmas legendry from around the world. I’m a lumper rather than a splitter when it comes to syncretizing folklore, so I am combining all the various gift-giving bearded figures—Ded Moroz, Sinterklaas, Father Christmas—into the figure of the historical St. Nicholas of Myra, who is, after all, their original inspiration.

Snegurochka

Similarly, I intended to collapse most of Nicholas’s disreputable companions into the figure of Krampus. Some of them, however, don’t want to collapse. In Russia, Ded Moroz (“Grandfather Frost”), a depersonalized St. Nicholas figure, has a companion named Snegurochka, an unusually pleasant companion who is a young maiden originally made out of snow (or created by some winter deities, take your pick). I’ve decided to add her into the story as a sort of counterpoint to the rough and vicious Krampus.

She also gives me an excuse to explain away the “Mrs. Claus” popular in America: Since St. Nicholas is a monk and a bishop, he can’t have a wife, but some who have caught glimpses of Snegurochka riding in his sleigh may understandably have thought he did.

The Butcher

There is a character from French folklore, Père Fouettard, I originally intended to blend with Krampus—but his story is so singular that I think he must be a separate character in his own right: He is a butcher who slaughtered three young children, cut them up, salted them, and hid them in barrels. St. Nicholas discovered the dastardly deed, resurrected the children, and punished the butcher by … making him follow him around.

Weird punishment, I know.

I rather like the idea of a murderous, ax-wielding butcher tagging after Krampus, Snegurochka, and the nameless radioactive reindeer on their mission to kill bad elves and rescue Santa Claus. None of the other characters in this motley troupe are out-and-out murderers, but this guy is. He probably even shocks Krampus with his bloodthirstiness.

Black Pete

I’m also not sure at the moment about what to do with Black Pete, the companion of St. Nicholas from Scandinavia. I’m not at all concerned about the recent ruckus over his supposedly being racist (from what I’ve gathered, he’s “black” because he’s Spanish, having originated in the Spanish occupation of the Netherlands, and is therefore not “black” at all in the current sense of the word). It’s just that I’m honestly not sure what role he’s going to play. I like him, though, because I can set him up as a genuine friend of Nicholas. Krampus and the butcher dude are too creepy and weird, and I expect that Nicholas is somewhat embarrassed by them. Snegurochka he probably treats like a daughter. But Pete can be an equal who works alongside him, advises him, and seriously helps him.

I’m intrigued by the Spanish occupation and may use that, but I’m also contemplating giving Black Pete an earlier origin in Al-Andalus and making him a Muslim. Still haven’t decided.

Oberon

I’m still working out the role of Oberon. The backstory on the elves is inspired by the Matter of France; according to the Legends of Charlemagne—drawing on, presumably, Orlando Furioso—the king of the fairies had converted to Christianity. If we conflate this unnamed king character with Shakespeare’s Oberon and also with the elves of Santa Claus, then we can reach the conclusion that Oberon, King of the Fairies, is a Christian elf in charge of Santa’s workshop. It’s likely Nicholas who converted Oberon in the first place; that would explain the elf-king’s Christianity in the legendary source.

Nisse

But there are also the nisse of Scandinavian mythology, diminutive creatures who resemble garden gnomes with their wooly beards and pointy hats. These nisse are similar to brownies in that they protect homes and do housework and are rewarded with butter-laced porridge. They over time became associated with Christmas and are apparently the inspiration for the tiny Christmas elves associated with Santa Claus in the United States.

These creatures would give me a good excuse to incorporate some Scandinavian culture into the elvish society at the North Pole, something I am eager to do, being inspired by the use of a Laplander language as “Elvish” in the movie The Christmas Chronicles, which starred Kurt Russell as probably the most convincing screen Santa I’ve ever seen.

I could claim that the nisse, as fairy creatures, are rightly under Oberon’s rule, and that most of them therefore converted to Christianity and joined Nicholas’s band—so they may make up the greater population of fay folk at the North Pole. This would explain the predominance of small, bearded figures among Santa’s elves.

The Mounts

St. Nicholas is associated with various steeds. In Flanders, he rides a horse that can glide over rooftops. He is also associated with a creature called the Yule Goat, a prank-prone Scandinavian creature that demands gifts. I am still determining what to do with these critters.

Regardless of what I decide for the goat and the horse, I will necessarily give St. Nicholas his reindeer, though they will be full-sized and not tiny, and they will be true reindeer—not white-tailed deer posing as reindeer, as they often are in American depictions. The association between St. Nicholas and reindeer goes back a ways, but it was of course the famous poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” that permanently associated the saint with eight reindeer and also gave them names.

Having a certain weakness for talking animal characters, I intend to incorporate these eight reindeer and give them personalities related in some way to their names. There will also be an unnamed ninth reindeer with a radioactive nose who is obliged to wear a lead mask, and who is totally an original character and in no way inspired by any other ninth reindeer who is presently under copyright.

The Black Precipice

Although not really directly related to the bewilderingly complex myths surrounding St. Nicholas, I am fascinated by old-time speculations about what was at the North Pole. One theory, found sometimes in speculative fiction from previous eras, is that the north and south poles have giant mountains made of lodestone, which kind of makes sense when you need to explain how compasses work and don’t know about the more complex physics involved.

Also supposedly at the poles are the Symmes Holes, named for John Cleves Symmes Jr., who passionately believed that the Earth was hollow and that holes at the north and south poles led into the interior, and whose vigorous promulgation of that belief made it popular for about a century.

There were in the past some legitimate reasons to think the Earth was hollow, reasons subsequently swept away by further scientific advances. Specifically, Edmund Halley, for whom Halley’s Comet is named, proposed four concentric spheres to the Earth, and he didn’t do this because he was a crackpot, but because he needed a model to explain some aberrations he had discovered in the Earth’s magnetic field—that is, he made a legitimate, albeit erroneous, scientific hypothesis.

Nonetheless, I’m unaware of any good reasons to think the poles have huge holes in them. Symmes apparently proposed this idea spontaneously, albeit passionately.

for reasons unclear, this fantastical and apparently baseless theory remains popular among internet conspiracy theorists today:

I have a great love for this kind of thing, so in my envisioning of Santa Claus’s military-industrial complex at the North Pole, a compound he built over centuries with the help of his elves, I feel a need to incorporate both the Black Precipice and the Symmes Hole. The mountain of lodestone, you see, is jutting out of the middle of the hole, and it is upon this mountain that Nicholas has built his elvish city.

This is inadvertently advantageous to the elves,because, although their baptism makes them immune to church bells and other Christian accouterments,  they still cannot bear the touch of cold iron—yet iron cannot be brought near the Black Precipice.

Makes sense, right?

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Copyright

I’m working today on Son of Hel, my holly-jolly Christmas novel that will attempt to harmonize the disparate accretions surrounding Saint Nicholas. Unsurprisingly, these legends can be a bit of a maze to navigate, partly because many of them, at least here in America, are the product of corporate marketing—and that means copyright issues.

As he likely was for many children, Rudolph the Red-Nosed was my favorite reindeer when I was a kid, so I wanted him to feature prominently in Son of Hel—until it occurred to me that he was very likely under copyright.

Creative Law Center has a fine article on exactly that subject. Rudolph was created by Robert L. May, who invented the character for a children’s book he wrote for Montgomery Ward. The company later granted him the copyright, which would have run out by now, but has been renewed and does not run out again until the 2030s, as permissions are now managed by the company Character Arts.

Even though the story is copyrighted, curiously, a reproduction of May’s original manuscript is available online. The original story of Rudolph is written in a doggerel imitation of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” the poem that originates most of our modern notions about Santa. Rudolph’s story in the book is more-or-less the same as that in the still-more-famous song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which was written by May’s brother and picked up by Gene Autry.

The story of Montgomery Ward’s magnanimous granting of the copyright to the character’s creator, and his use of it to provide for his family for generations, is very Christmas-y, so I can hardly begrudge it, but it does put me in a bind. I won’t give up as easily as that; in the near future, I’ll figure out the best way to contact Character Arts. If I can’t get permission, or if the cost is prohibitive, I’ll either have to leave Rudolph out or refer to him so obliquely that I escape copyright infringement.

A Visit from a Magical Girl (revised)

A poem

The previous version of this was doggerel I whipped out in about ten minutes, but this version (with some fudging) uses the anapestic tetrameter of the original.

T’was the night before Christmas, when all through the town,
Lots of girls were a-stirring, to beat monsters down.
So they stalked all the baddies that threatened mankind,
For to blast them with magic and kick their behinds.

They crouched in the dark by the chimneys with care,
Or slipped across rooftops—villains beware!
One might wear a kerchief, and one has a cap,
But they all got short skirts, what you think about that?

Then at City Hall, there arose such a clatter,
That Plum Fairy Lyssa soon checked out the matter.
A monster showed up with a roar and a flash,
So Lyssa transformed and got ready to bash!

When what to her wondering eyes should appear,
But a slavering, fanged, and bloodthirsty deer?
T’was Rudolph! Whose terrible, powerful nose,
Had at last warped his mind with its horrid bright glow!

Our Lyssa, however, so eager to brawl,
Quick leapt like a gymnast atop of a wall.
“Stop there, evil monster!” she said with a scoff,
“You’ve attacked us on Christmas, and that ticks me off!”

The Moon Princess blest her with power and might,
That she might be quick to kick butt in a fight,
To halt evil crooks in the midst of a crime,
Or to battle vile creatures beyond space and time!

Now punch him, now bludgeon! Now blast him with pow’r!
And yet his eyes glowed with a menacing glow’r!
Now kick him, now stab him, now strangle and blitz ’im!
That deer is no match for this young doe-eyed vixen!

At last Rudolph gasped and lay dead at her feet,
As his bright ruby blood ran out into the street.
“I’ve vanquished the creature,” the Plum Fairy mused,
“But why then do I feel as if I still should lose?”

In leapt Marionette, the famed robot girl,
With her magical pencil, which she gave a twirl.
“Young Lyssa, my dear, you have fought well and brave,
But killed poor Rudolph, whom you know you should save.”

“Well, no one has once taught me any of that,”
Said Lyssa, perplexed. (On the ground she now spat.)
“To fight off the monsters that threaten our world,
Is the constant hard job of a magical girl!”

“We fight for mankind, that is certainly true,”
Said Marionette, whose cold fingers turned blue.
“But always remember that we serve the Light—
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a clean fight!”