Micro Monday - October 28, 2024
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
Yesterday was the last Sunday in October, which means that stores are starting to put out their Christmas displays. I love the holiday season, but I’m still firmly planted in Halloween, which means I’ll spend the next few days rewatching my favorite horror movies and kicking fresh fallen leaves around the sidewalk. I’m not saying I have to finish all my Halloween candy before I put on Nat King Cole, but I do appreciate the sense of closure that comes from knowing I thoroughly enjoyed October before rushing into November.
That said, Christmas and Halloween have been pushing into each other’s territory for decades, and there are interesting things happening at the border.
The Lodge is one of my favorite psychological thrillers, and it happens during the Christmas season. So does Gremlins, in fact, and Phoebe Cates delivers an iconic monologue that’s probably worth the hour and forty-six minutes you’d spend on a rewatch. It’s A Wonderful Life is a thoroughly Christmas-y movie; it’s also a chilling moral tale about greed, poverty, depression, and suicide in small town America. A Christmas Carol is a ghost story for goodness’ sake.
Others are less obvious, but you can find them if you look. A few years ago, I entered a microfiction contest where contestants were asked to choose something innocuous and make a horror story out of it. Without a moment’s hesitation, I chose this scene from the 1964 stop-motion film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer:
Some context: Rudolph and Hermie, two misfits from the North Pole, leave their homes and families to make their own way in the world. After escaping from the Abominable Snowman, they wash up on the Island of Misfit Toys, where elves have apparently been dumping defective toys for years. The toys introduce themselves through song (how else?) and offer the newcomers a place to stay for the night.
The twist:
I believe, with all my heart, that Hermie made all the toys on the island. The misfit elf who can’t do anything right - who stays in the workshop after everyone else has left so that he can add teeth to the dolls - is one hundred percent responsible for this nightmare. Fortunately for Hermie, the toys don’t recognize him, and he’s allowed to leave the island in peace.
But I sometimes wonder what else Hermie might have made. What other horrors lurk just off screen? This story was my answer to that question, and I offer it to you now as we bridge the gap between my two favorite times of the year.
Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
All told, the Island of Misfit Toys had fourteen thousand, eight hundred and seventy inhabitants.
There were toy trains with square wheels, teddy bears with different colored eyes, and plastic knights who sometimes got confused and held their swords upside down.
And for each of them, a home.
But there were others, too. Toys with lead paint and sharp edges. Dolls who chewed your hair and never stopped. Pull-string men who worshipped dead, forgotten gods in vulgar, whispered tongues.
So Santa thought and thought, and then he smiled.
“Mrs. Claus,” he said. “I think the naughty children deserve something new this year.”