How a Shy Jewish Boy’s Nose Issues Gave America Rudolf for Christmas

Rudolph the Red-Nose reindeer’s creator didn’t have a very shiny nose, but he was a Jewish guy with a very, ahem, prominent beak.

Some of the West’s ugliest, most foundational, stereotypes haunted Robert Lewis May’s life. Yet his saga tells a lovely Yuletide tale about a best-selling Christmas song romanticizing a rescued underdog, that actually rescued a hopelessly romantic underdog – May himself.

‘Twas the month after Christmas, 1938, and the great retailers at Montgomery Ward department stores were already preparing for Christmas… 1939. Robert May was an advertising editor for the company famous for coining the phrase "satisfaction guaranteed or your money back" in 1875...

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