Playing Reindeer Games

This morning in my email was a come-on to “find out which reindeer you are.” In normal times, I would probably not notice it. I would hit the delete and go on. But this year, it looks terribly out of place. The reindeer do not have personalities, after all, so what good would it be to find out I am most like Dancer or Prancer? Is Donder the fussy one; Blitzen the hoarder? They were all bullies, if you listen to the old Gene Autry song about Rudolf. They played Monopoly and other board games if you listen to the take-off of the old Gene Autry song.

Then again, perhaps they do, sadly, fit the times. It is a time of bullies. Read your news feed. A teenager was shot and killed because his radio was too loud. That is the ultimate in bullying. We see very little live-and-let-live these days. The pressures from a pandemic, lost jobs, lost relatives, and hard decisions are turning us into people we did not ever mean to be. And politics? Eight against one that turns out all right in the end is hardly a blip on our political radar. The reindeer made fun of poor Rudolf, we see people shot and killed over differences.

So, I do not know if I am more like Dasher or Comet. What I do know is it may be time to listen to the story of Rudolf. He’s a lesson. We teach these little songs and stories to our children to give them empathy and compassion. We need to relearn them ourselves. You cannot teach what you do not practice. Actions are what will stay with the next generation.

I don’t remember a lot from my father-in-law. He was hard of hearing and I tired of yelling. I would sit with him in his car because he could hear me better there. But I was at one of his rental houses, once. He hadn’t received much rent from the woman who was supposed to be the renter. She had left, her things were gone, and he was looking over the house to see what needed to be done. She saw his car and stopped in. She came in and offered him a handful of bills. It was, she said, all she could come up with. He told her to keep it. I was not surprised. When he was a young man, during the Great Depression, he was in Chicago. He was very much alone without a job, family, or help of any kind. He asked a stranger for money to buy a cup of coffee. The stranger handed him five dollars. My father-in-law asked for the man’s address so he could send him the money when he got on his feet. The man said, “No, just pass it on someday.” Standing in a cold house, facing a woman who could have paid her rent had she not been addicted to alcohol, he fulfilled the stranger’s bidding. It was not the only time he did so. Lessons of compassion and goodwill had not been lost on him.

We need to remind ourselves of the less-like-us. We need to take in our Rudolfs before they prove themselves. We need to care for them if they never prove themselves. I don’t know if the renter ever conquered her addition. But I do know that she saw compassion for it when my father-in-law pushed the bills back into her hand. If our heart is filled more with the good things we have seen and heard and less with the pandemic and politics, we will get through this with our sanity and hearts in a better place.

On your worst day, do something for someone else. Give of yourself in some way. Heal one corner of a battered heart. Read the story of Rudolf aloud. Find out that you would be the reindeer with the most loving heart, whatever his name.