People people. Santa’s reindeer HAVE to be male. Only big strong manly reindeer could pull this one off every year. :rolleyes:
Seriously, I always thought they were all male. Double :rolleyes:!
Fully-grown reindeer aren’t exactly big animals. Compared to the sort of draft horses you’d normally see pulling a sleigh of that size, I’d say “tiny” is an accurate description. Good eatin’, though, even if there isn’t much meat on 'em.
Santa can make reindeer fly. He can get eight (or nine, if you’re one of those Rudolph Revisionists) reindeer to work as a team to pull a sleigh - they are not cooperative creatures and even experienced reindeer herders never try more than two. So we know the guy can work magic. I still say that’s the explanation for the antlered reindeer in December.
This topic is in the international news again. I have yet to see convincing, empirical evidence that ANY of Santa’s reindeer have antlers at the time they pull the sleigh on Christmas Eve. I see a lot of poetical speculation, along with traditional yarn-spinning, but no persuasive photographs, first-person descriptions by honest and sober witnesses, or even interview with the reindeer themselves.
We can completely discount movie depictions, since it’s well-known that antlers make for a more interesting screen presence and the directors and movie crew are not going to miss THAT opportunity. Besides, they have no first-hand knowledge on which to base their antlering antics. They have, in the past, shown no reluctance to film purported giant ants that could not possibly exist.
And the interviews with reindeer experts that I have seen definitely do not include experts familiar with that special breed of “tiny reindeer” we know Santa favors.
My conclusion is that the REAL reindeer may very well be all male, all female, or a mixture of male and female.
I assumed that they were all male because they are basically just a reindeer chain gang, forced to do Santa’s bidding. And those with female names? I’ve seen plenty of prison dramas.
Olive was a female.
olive the other reindeer
As far as antlers? I say “no antlers”.
There are places they’d get shot down with a rack. A bloody reindeer falling off the roof is not a pleasant Christmas morning look.
You’re wrong. This is a picture of Santa himself with his actual reindeer when they were in a parade in Toronto a few years ago, and you can clearly see the antlers.
The problem with the OP’s 21-year-old zombie logic about antlers is that these are flying reindeer. It’s a completely different species.
Flying reindeer are a very rare species. Rarely spotted, and then only around the 25th of December. Always antlered, from what the few observers have been able to see. So far, nobody has been able to get close enough to ascertain what sex they are.
As long as they can pull Santa’s sleigh, that’s all that matters.
I never thought much about it, but tended to default of thinking of them as male because they bullied Rudolph and in my experience bullying tends to be fairly gender segregated.
Bullying among reindeer is apparently not gender segregated (at least not entirely) but a function of antleredness.
When my kids were smaller we visited the Anchorage Zoo shortly after Christmas and found that we arrived just after the male in the reindeer enclosure had dropped the second of his antlers.
The keeper allowed us to heft this single antler and marvel at a critter carrying twice that weight on his head for months. She also gloated that now the two females in his enclosure were giving him hell. Something, she told us, that he richly deserved.
I should also point out that the only credible eyewitness account we have describes a “miniature sleigh.” Therefore, all the so-called photographic evidence we have that shows antlered reindeer pulling a NORMAL sleigh is obviously bogus.
This eyewitness also completely fails to mention antlers AT ALL.
Everyone knows the reindeer don’t actually fly, they are the “engine”, the motive power source. Christmas Spirit is what makes the sleigh fly, the reindeer simply provide the hosspower. Santa could power his sleigh with a big block Chevrolet, an electric motor, a coal fired steam drive, anything that provides actual power that Christmas Spirit converts into flying energy. It’s a Magical Reactionless Drive. Duh.
So why does Santa still use reindeer? Tradition.
And as to the OP which i now old enough to vote, yes, I always thought the reindeer were all male, because I was raised in a time when men did everything. There were few or no women firefighters, doctors, police, or starship captains, so of course the reindeer were all male. If they weren’t they would be referred to as “Santa’s lady reindeer”, naturally.
Per the recent documentary Red One, the deer are huge with very impressive racks. Only stags of reindeer have antlers that proportion.
Perhaps Santa keeps the reindeer in the same greenhouse where he grows the poinsettias, and it throws off their cycle.
This suggests a reindeer was first introduced in 1821. Just… one, nameless, antlered reindeer.
WAG: the reindeer filed a complaint with OSHA or the DoL on illegal & dangerous working conditions, forcing Santa to hire more. It also forced Santa to give them names so they can share in the royalties.
I never gave any thought to the gender of the reindeer. They were just reindeer.
Santa’s reindeer are robots created by the Nazis that live in the center of the Earth and exit their lair via the North Pole (where Santa is the guardian of the entrance). All today’s toys are mind control devices and very soon the Xmas Nazis will rule the planet.
I. Hate. Xmas. Nazis.
Santa seems to also have a large supply of penguins at the North Pole based on the inflatable displays of many of my neighbors. (The S. Hemisphere kind, not the original N. Hemisphere type they are named after.) So presumably into alternate animal husbandry.
Having just watched that documentary: Santa specifically greets his reindeer as “ladies.”
Only on the SD would we have this earnest, interesting discussion!
Note that in some circles of young men it was sometimes common to call each other “ladies” or similar terms. Cf. punk bands such The Sex Pistols. (I’d rather not say their most common term of endearment.)
Santa Claus: the original punk rocker.