A lot has been written about the names of Santa’s reindeer. A U.C. Berkeley grad student once wrote a dissertation about Santa’s reindeer, which I thought was a huge waste of time. Now you might not think that anyone would get hot under the collar about the names of Santa’s reindeer, but you would be wrong. Last Christmas, two men in a bar in Los Angeles got into an argument over the names of Santa’s reindeer. Other patrons in the bar gradually entered the argument and took sides. Things deteriorated until it became a general brawl. One man was stabbed. Many of the patrons in the bar were arrested. In order to minimize the violence, the men who believed that one of the reindeer is named ‘Donder’ were kept in separate cells at the jail from the men who believed it is ‘Donner’ – until they sobered up the next day.

Here’s the real story….Santa’s reindeer were first named in the poem: “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, which is more commonly known by the poem’s first line: “Twas the night before Christmas.” The poem first appeared in a newspaper in New York City in 1823. There is some debate as to who wrote it. In the poem, 2 of the reindeer were named Dunder and Blixem, which is Dutch for thunder and lightning. In the early 1800s, a lot of New Yorkers could speak Dutch. Remember, New York City was originally called New Amsterdam. Over the next 100 years, the name Dunder gradually changed to Donder in reprintings of the poem. Then in 1949, Gene Autry recorded the song ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’, which quickly became a huge hit and is still the world’s second most popular Christmas song, just behind ‘White Christmas.’ In ‘Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer’, 2 of the reindeer are named Donner and Blitzen, which is German for thunder and lightning. By 1949, very few Americans could speak Dutch, but a lot of Americans understood German. So now you know – and now you can find some other subject for your doctoral dissertation!