The birth of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

The heartwarming story of Rudolph guiding Santa through the winter snow helped guide the author to a better life.

I had no idea where the story Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer originated, so I had to do some digging.

The story was always around when I was a child, and yes, I cried when the snow monster took Rudolph over the cliff. Hey, I was four years young!

Robert (Bob) May wrote the story in 1939. A self-proclaimed outcast, he was smart for his age and skipped a couple of grades. This resulted in him being younger and smaller than his classmates.

He described himself as a nerdy kid and a loser. I think we can all relate to that sentiment at one point in our lives.

He used his opinion of himself to help his daughter navigate the challenges of growing up, telling her a bedtime tale of a misfit reindeer.

Bob always wanted to write an American Novel and eventually found work at Montgomery Ward as a catalog writer. Montgomery Ward was known for giving away free books at Christmas time to children throughout the country.

May thought Rudolph would be a good character in a book and took pen to paper. After much labor of words, May wrote Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Montgomery Ward printed two million copies that year, and Bob received hundreds of letters from children, teachers, and other store managers. It was a huge success. After 10 years, his company gave him the rights to the story.

With help from May’s brother, a songwriter, they turned the short story into a song. The song found its way to a famous cowboy, Gene Autry, and blew up the charts in 1949. The classic Christmas animation soon followed.

Rudolph forever earned Bob and his family a comfortable life.

Rudolph truly went down in history!

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