Transcription
I remember as a kid, Christmas was a lot different than it is today. I remember my parents always saying, "It's Christmas again already." And not understanding that, 'cause it seemed like Christmas was a million miles away. It seemed like the year dragged on and dragged on, and it was a different life by the time you got to Christmas. 'Cause it was for you.
Now that I'm older, I wish things would slow down a little bit, but it's just time is merely perspective now, I guess. But I remember being a kid and there was like this, I don't know, this, this, this code. I don't remember how it happened. And it wasn't, I don't think it was because of advertising. I remember hearing about it at school in the playground. And it was never from a teacher. It was always really from my friends. "Tonight, tonight's Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer." "Don't forget Friday is Frosty the Snowman." "Charlie Brown Christmas is tonight." And we would, we would wait at Christmas time. At Christmas time, we couldn't wait to see whatever followed this sound on.
Let me take you to a time before CBS television existed. It was 1939, and the country was clawing its way out of the Great Depression. Money was tight. Dreams were even tighter. Montgomery Ward, which had been around forever, was competition to Sears. They had been buying and giving away children's Christmas booklets every year. Someone in the executive chain finally said what corporations always say, "Why are we paying somebody else to make these books? Why don't we just write our own stories? Can we do we have anybody in-house that can do this cheaper?"
And somebody said, "Yeah, we do. We have this guy named Robert May, and he was a copywriter, unassuming. I mean, he did not look like a guy who was writing Christmas stories, a myth-maker. He was in an office. His office for Montgomery Ward was barely whiter than the desk inside of it. And when they came to him, he was a man who was drowning in grief. His wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer. The two of them had one daughter. She was small, Barbara. And Robert's medical bills were just stacking up. And in the middle of all this, Montgomery Ward came to him and said, 'Hey, can you write a cheery little Christmas story for children?'"
He said later, he almost turned them down. Almost said, "Are you kidding me? How do I possibly write joy when my life is collapsing around me?" He said he went home, and that night he looked at his daughter, this little girl trying to make sense of her mom dying, make sense of sorrow that was way too big for her world. And he remembered the offer to write something of joy. And he thought, if I can give her something, even if I can't give her stability, if I can give her a moment, it's worth it.
So he started thinking back in his life, and he remembered being a small, shy child, and he always felt different. He always felt he always felt less than. And so this character started to form, a character that was mocked for what made him different until that day. That difference is what saved the world. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Rudolph wasn't a reindeer. First, Rudolph was Robert May. He was every child who felt small, who felt different.
And he would write in bursts. He would scribble lines between doctor visits and shaping rhymes in the hospital hallways. He would draft a few lines, and then he would go into his wife's hospital room with his daughter, and he would read them aloud. His mom was fighting for breath. When Evelyn died, he stopped writing. Montgomery Ward urged him, "Finish it. Finish it." And he did.
When he finished it, he printed, the company did, 2.4 million copies of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. That first Christmas, 2.4 million, and it was an instant sensation. It passed from hand to hand. It was read aloud in living rooms across America. The country, the country didn't know that the man behind it, but they knew the feeling of hope being born out of heartbreak.
And then something that I'm not sure would happen now happened. Montgomery Ward, which was usually really strict about intellectual property, did something unprecedented. They saw the devastation in Robert May's life and they said, "Robert, we see you're struggling with these bills. You wrote this. You struggled with this." And they gave him full ownership of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. All rights, all royalties, all future potential. That is an act of Christmas generosity that is unheard of, especially in that era when everyone was struggling. And it changed the course of May's life and his daughter.
His wife died, but his wife's brother was a songwriter named Johnny Marks. He took the story and shaped it, shaped it into a melody that we all know. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Bing Crosby was offered. He said no. They offered it to a singing cowboy. And he's like, "I don't think this fits my image, but I'll give it a whirl." Gene Autry. In 1949, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Gene Autry became the second bestselling song of all time, only behind White Christmas. It sold over 25 million copies, and it turned Robert May's grief story and sorrow into cultural bedrock.
And then 25 years after the original booklet, Rankin and Bass brought Rudolph to stop-motion animation, and Burl Ives played the snowman and the abominable snow monster in the Island of Misfit Toys. Nobody wants a Charlie in the Box. And the American myth was complete.
Economists have tried to figure out what the rights were worth in total. They looked at the entire empire, the books, the records, the TV specials, the merchandising, the international licensing. It's well over $100 million in revenue adjusted for inflation. The money that is flowing to the May and the Marks family today, the rights that Montgomery Ward handed to the grieving widower because it seemed like the right thing to do. Well over a quarter of a billion dollars. One of the most valuable intellectual properties in Christmas history, handed to a man who just needed hope for his daughter, wrote it for that reason.
And I think that's why we waited as kids, and we still love it as adults because behind the red nose and behind the jingle bells and the puppets and the fat snowman is this single man who, in a very small office, wrote his way through heartbreak, and then a company showed unexpected compassion. And that created something remarkably true. The Christmas myth about a reindeer born from the pain of a father just trying to give his daughter one spark of light in the dark. And that's why we waited for that sound at this time every year.
And while that sound isn't there anymore for our children, now it's the Apple logo. It's the same story. It's the same magic, and it's the same message.