Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer --Already??

Recently, I stopped in at a large, well-known retailer on my way home, having forgotten to pick up that one item I really needed earlier in the day. Rushing through the doors, pre-occupied with an attempt to recall the layout of the store's aisles, I unexpectedly pulled up short, disoriented.

Pausing, I consciously took in my surroundings, looking to identify what incongruity was registering in some part of my brain. Only then did I realize Gene Autry was crooning "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" over the speakers. Yet I still had pumpkins decorating my home. Halloween was still days away.

As I recovered from my mental stumble, I heard “all of the other reindeer / used to laugh and call him names / They never let poor Rudolph / join in any reindeer games.”

Wow. Why had I never realized this song—this whole story—is built around the bullying, shaming and rejecting of a ‘child’ who is different? I continued to listen, latching onto the phrase "then all the reindeer loved him / and they shouted out with glee / Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer / you’ll go down in History."

It was another 'wow' moment for me. Rudolph had the opportunity to redeem himself—to turn his difference into an asset that the whole community—that Santa himself (i.e. god)—acknowledged. This iconic narrative was all about humiliation and redemption—exclusion and salvation. A commercialization of Christianity on a level that had never occurred to me.

As I subdued my knee-jerk reaction to the crassness of pre-Halloween Christmas carols, there came an ‘Ahhhhh, aha’ moment. This not-so-subtle Christmas marketing was about lay-away. About urging shoppers to not get caught short and shamed at Christmas, unable to give special gifts to the people in their lives expecting them. This merchandizer was positioning itself as the bystander trying to prevent public humiliation and damage to social bonds (or offering a way to redeem oneself for the mis-steps of the past year).

Having been weaned on post-modern theory (and the centrality of desire), I understood the marketing of Christmas to center on desiring, around the inculcation of ‘needs’ through images of (sexual) satisfaction, love, happiness, and well-being. But perhaps no small part of this merchandizing is about shame. About accessing and playing upon that dark inadequacy lurking in all our breasts.

We live in a society that refuses to acknowledge shame, to mitigate its power by bringing it to the light of day. To feel shame is to be inadequate. Were one adequate (able to provide Christmas bounty) one would not feel shame. The best way to avoid this black emotional hole is to start laying away gifts now. These gifts manage—even redeem—relationships, generating smiles that affirm one’s competency and adequacy; affirm that continued emotional investment in a particular relationship is worthwhile.

Such dark musings about commercialization and gift-giving are hardly new around the holidays (though these critiques rarely result in non-compliance, as rejecting culture’s gift-giving mandate seems the greater evil. Boycott the holiday—or give cheap, little pondered upon gifts—and you will damage social bonds.)

Why should I be pulled up short by any of this? In addition to well-known critiques, hadn’t I studied tribes (in those long-ago anthropology classes) that ritualized gift giving to rival tribes, garnering pride and confidence with each gift that out-did the offerings of the other group? This gifting ritual was nothing new.

What is new is a cultural dynamic that does not allow for redemption, for the salvation of social bonds.

Many of today’s victims of rejection and exclusion, unlike Rudolph (or those wise shoppers putting gifts on lay-away in October), are denied the possibility to negotiate their shame; to redeem themselves, to connect to the peer group, be absolved their differences and if not celebrated, at least feel as though they belong.