{"id":225,"date":"2013-12-21T21:45:49","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T03:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.santasmontana.com\/?p=225"},"modified":"2013-12-21T23:00:15","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T05:00:15","slug":"the-true-story-of-rudolph-the-red-nosed-reindeer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/?p=225","title":{"rendered":"The True Story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A man named\u00a0<\/b>Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty\u00a0<\/b>apartment window into the chilling December\u00a0<\/b>night. \u00a0<\/b>His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap\u00a0<\/b>quietly sobbing. Bob’s wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer. \u00a0<\/b>Little Barbara couldn’t understand why her mommy could never\u00a0<\/b>come home. Barbara looked up into her dad’s eyes and asked,\u00a0<\/b>“Why isn’t Mommy just like everybody else’s Mommy?” Bob’s\u00a0<\/b>jaw tightened and his eyes welled with tears. Her question\u00a0<\/b>brought waves of grief, but also of anger. It had been the\u00a0<\/b>story of Bob’s life. Life always had to be different for\u00a0<\/b>Bob.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Small when he was a kid, Bob was often bullied\u00a0<\/b>by other boys. He was too little at the time to compete in\u00a0<\/b>sports. He was often called names he’d rather not remember.\u00a0<\/b>From childhood, Bob was different and never seemed to fit\u00a0<\/b>in. Bob did complete college, married his loving wife and\u00a0<\/b>was grateful to get his job as a copywriter at Montgomery\u00a0<\/b>Ward during the Great Depression. Then he was blessed with\u00a0<\/b>his little girl. But it was all short-lived. Evelyn’s bout\u00a0<\/b>with cancer stripped them of all their savings and now Bob\u00a0<\/b>and his daughter were forced to live in a two-room apartment\u00a0<\/b>in the Chicago slums. Evelyn died just days before Christmas\u00a0<\/b>in 1938.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bob struggled to give hope to his child, for\u00a0<\/b>whom he couldn’t even afford to buy a Christmas gift. But if\u00a0<\/b>he couldn’t buy a gift, he was determined to make one – a\u00a0<\/b>storybook! Bob had created an animal character in his own\u00a0<\/b>mind and told the animal’s story to little Barbara to give\u00a0<\/b>her comfort and hope. Again and again Bob told the story,\u00a0<\/b>embellishing it more with each telling. Who was the\u00a0<\/b>character? What was the story all about? The story Bob May\u00a0<\/b>created was his own autobiography in fable form. The\u00a0<\/b>character he created was a misfit outcast like he was. The\u00a0<\/b>name of the character? A little reindeer named Rudolph, with\u00a0<\/b>a big shiny nose.<\/b>Bob finished the book just in time to give\u00a0<\/b>it to his little girl on Christmas Day. But the story\u00a0<\/b>doesn’t end there.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

The\u00a0<\/b>general manager of Montgomery Ward caught wind of the little\u00a0<\/b>storybook and offered Bob May a nominal fee to purchase the\u00a0<\/b>rights to print the book. Wards went on to\u00a0<\/b>print,<\/b>\u00a0<\/b>\u201c<\/b>Rudolph, the Red-Nosed\u00a0<\/b>Reindeer<\/b>\u201d<\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/b>distribute it to children visiting Santa Claus in their\u00a0<\/b>stores. By 1946 Wards had printed and distributed more than\u00a0<\/b>six million copies of Rudolph. That same year, a major\u00a0<\/b>publisher wanted to purchase the rights from Wards to print\u00a0<\/b>an updated version of the book.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In an unprecedented\u00a0<\/b>gesture of kindness, the CEO of Wards returned all rights\u00a0<\/b>back to Bob May. The book became a best seller. Many toy and\u00a0<\/b>marketing deals followed and Bob May, now remarried with a\u00a0<\/b>growing family, became wealthy from the story he created to\u00a0<\/b>comfort his grieving daughter. But the story doesn’t end\u00a0<\/b>there either.\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Bob’s\u00a0<\/b>brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, made a song adaptation to\u00a0<\/b>Rudolph. Though the song was turned down by such popular\u00a0<\/b>vocalists as Bing Crosby and Dinah Shore , it was recorded by\u00a0<\/b>the singing cowboy, Gene Autry. “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed\u00a0<\/b>Reindeer” was released in 1949 and became a phenomenal\u00a0<\/b>success, selling more records than any other Christmas song,\u00a0<\/b>with the exception of “White Christmas.”\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The gift of love that Bob May\u00a0<\/b>created for his daughter so long ago kept on returning back\u00a0<\/b>to bless him again and again. And Bob May learned the\u00a0<\/b>lesson, just like his dear friend Rudolph, that being\u00a0<\/b>different isn’t so bad. In fact, being different can be a\u00a0<\/b>blessing.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Reindeer<\/a>

Reindeer Pulling the Sleigh<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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MERRY\u00a0<\/i><\/b>CHRISTMAS<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

\"Santa's<\/a>

Santa’s Reindeer<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man named\u00a0Bob May, depressed and brokenhearted, stared out his drafty\u00a0apartment window into the chilling December\u00a0night. \u00a0His 4-year-old daughter Barbara sat on his lap\u00a0quietly sobbing. Bob’s wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer. \u00a0Little Barbara couldn’t understand why her mommy could never\u00a0come home. Barbara looked up into her dad’s eyes and asked,\u00a0“Why isn’t Mommy just like […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-and-videos","category-santa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":233,"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225\/revisions\/233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/santasmontana.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}