The story goes like this: Prior to recorded history, the Eurasian continent was dominated by two civilizations: Hyperborea and Tartaria, civilizations much more advanced than those that came after, and even those that still exist today. As civilizations are wont to do, Hyperborea and Tartaria obliterated each other in a massive, devastating conflict that essentially “reset” human history as we know it. Millennia later, during a business trip in Japan, Arthur Rankin Jr., of Rankin/Bass, received a facsimile of an ancient scroll purporting to chronicle this war, and elements of the Hyperborean-Tartarian war found their way into Rankin/Bass stop-motion Christmas specials (produced in Japan). Through this lens, these works depict the aftermath of this conflict, with rump states ruled by warlords (Santa Claus, Burgermeister Meisterburger, Kubla Kraus), wandering mercenaries (Yukon Cornelius), failed weapons and medical experiments (the Island of Misfit Toys), and successful leftover bioweapons (the Heat and Snow Misers, the Yeti, and perhaps Rudolph). Considering that these Christmas specials were produced during the Cold War, with two advanced civilizations pointing nuclear missiles at each other and threatening to obliterate humanity once more, it’s clear that to Rankin/Bass, the reason for the season is less a celebration and more a dire warning: there must be peace on Earth and goodwill toward men, or else.
In truth, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer has a far more sinister provenance, created by Robert L. May in 1939 for the Montgomery Ward department store chain to serve as a mascot for their annual Christmas booklet. Rudolph is now fully integrated into the Christmas canon, but it’s fascinating that he’s only about as old as many of our grandparents, and began life as an early bit of branded content. That’s nothing new of course. While Coca-Cola didn’t invent our modern image of Santa Claus, they definitely helped to popularize it, and “The Night Before Christmas” was written by the scion of a large military-and-clergy family that had been in New York since the French and Indian War. But back to Rudolph. Prior to the Rankin/Bass treatment, or even the 1949 Gene Autrey song that inspired their iteration, Max Fleischer directed an eight-minute animated adaptation of the story in 1948. In this version of events, Santa is a literal “big man” of the North Pole, ruling as a benevolent dictator over a community of anthropomorphized reindeer and eventually appointing Rudolph as the commander-in-chief of his reindeer council. It’s jarring to see a story we all know told before we knew how to properly tell it, especially when, again, the story is just as old as our grandparents. This isn’t to point and jeer at these peculiarities and to say “So much for your holly jolly holiday!” Rather, I mean to point and revel in these peculiarities. Objects in the mirror of history are always closer than they appear, and perhaps if we keep that in mind, we can avoid a wintry wasteland haunted by ghosts of wars past. Merry Christmas.
-- Jacob Everett is the editor-in-chief and publisher of APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL.