“Morluv makes fun of him for it. ‘Remember when Rudolph, in ’63, found that church in Rome and. . . .’ Morluv and the others love to tease Santa about being—well, a little windy. But, really, I mean, who has better stories to tell than that guy? Like I said, he’s a storyteller. Whose stories would you rather hear? Name one person.”
The Mission of 463 lasted until nearly eleven in the morning, but no one in the world noticed—the storm was still so bad on the 25th, you couldn’t tell if it was night or day. Thereafter, it was clear that Rudolph would be called into service whenever bad weather threatened. He would train constantly, and go if needed.
This was the way it was, for more than a millennium. Then, in the early 19th century, pollution over London and other heavily populated cities forced Claus to use Rudolph each year in certain areas. The Russian reindeer hasn’t had a year off since. If you look past blizzards and other weather vagaries, it’s accurate to say that Rudolph’s workload has increased precisely to the degree that smog has increased. He now leads several legs of The Mission each year, though never works a thirty-one-hour night like the others. “As I said, Rudolph is not a big deer,” says Steger, “so Santa doesn’t want to just hitch him to the team and use him for every trip. Even as it is, Rudolph stays in recovery until nearly June each year. He’s a small deer with a big heart.”
HOW DOES CLAUS KNOW which jaunts—besides Los Angeles, Mexico City and other obvious ones—should be Rudolph jaunts? He used to rely on intuition. Now he uses that, and a lot of science.
“Santa stays in touch with several meteorologists worldwide,” says Campbell. “He calls them often in December, and his calls become more frequent as Christmas approaches. Just before he takes off, he calls each of us. We supply data concerning cloud cover, wind patterns, high and low pressure areas. From this, he plans which trips Rudolph will lead.
“I’ll give you a couple of examples. Rudolph almost always has to do the Southern California swing because of the smog. But Rudolph only has to do the Australian trip if there’s a typhoon down there. You see? Santa loves it if he can spare Rudolph the Southern Hemisphere runs, because the big distances tire the little fellow out.
“Santa once joked that if he didn’t have help, New York City would take him half the night. ”
– AL ROKER, meteorologist and Helper
“Rudolph’s heaviest years were 1914 through ’18, and 1938 through ’45. When the world is at war, Santa’s job becomes as difficult as it is necessary. With bombs bursting up there and down below, Rudolph is needed to cut through the smoke.”
Campbell, for his part, was first needed by Claus in 1987. “People here at Weather Services had helped plot weather for Will Steger’s trip, and I guess Steger told Santa about our computers, our data gathering abilities and so forth. One day, he just called. It’s funny, I was on the phone with the guy—and I didn’t doubt who he was. He’s just the most sincere, most obviously honest fellow you’ve ever talked to. I’m proud to be a Helper. Who wouldn’t be?”
Campbell is not the only weatherman Helper. The big picture that he provides with his global-reach instruments is embellished by the local view. Regional weather-watchers worldwide, professionals and amateurs alike, are in touch with the North Pole. “I’ve been helping for twelve years now,” says Al Roker, the weatherman on NBC’s Today show. He files crucial reports from that most variable and dangerous of places, New York City. “Santa does like New York,” says Roker. “He told me so. He said it gives him everything. We’ve got the needy, the world’s many populations, the races, the unity of people in a common setting trying to get along. That’s what New York’s all about, and that’s what he’s all about. He said, ‘New York is like me—big and always awake.’ ”
Roker continues: “But no, he doesn’t find New York easy. It’s a challenge for him. The buildings make things tough, and the way nor’easters sweep down off New England has messed him up many a time.
“He wants to make sure New York goes smoothly each year. He doesn’t want to miss one kid in New York, especially with so many poor. But he doesn’t want to waste time here, either. That would throw off his schedule. So he phones constantly on the 23rd and even the 24th. I work with Ken Campbell on that. Ken gives Santa the approach from the northeast, the landing profile from Connecticut. I give him the local knowledge. For instance, the weather that we experienced here a week earlier could impact the slide-ratio on New York rooftops. They might still be slick with ice, they might be dry, they might be snow-covered. There are a lot of rooftops in Manhattan, and if I can help Santa do this town in a half-hour or less, then I feel like a hero.”
KEN CAMPBELL is a Helper, Al Roker is a Helper. On Kauai in the Hawaiian Islands, Lisa Patrick is also a Helper. And although she is a Helper you would expect to hear about, you still might laugh at the part she plays. She is a chimney sweep.
“Here’s the chimney sweep joke,” she says. “It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it.” It’s not as dirty a job in Hawaii as it is in the industrial cities, but come December 24th, it is an essential job. “Does Santa come down every chimney?” asks Patrick. “No. Of course not. I’ll tell you what I tell my three-year-old daughter Michaela, which happens to be the truth. Santa is a housebreaker. Basically, that’s what he is. He comes through an open window, a door ajar, a loose floorboard in the trailer, a dog’s door in the kitchen. He’s small and fast, so the chimney is the surest way. That’s why the chimney has become the classic image—because he always tries a chimney first. But if the flue is shut, he does what he can. He does what he has to.
“He’s a tough bird. I asked him if he wanted a windshield on that sled of his, and he just laughed. ”
– MELISSA FRANKLIN, physicist and Helper
“I’m a Helper because he asked me to be. My husband and I were home one night, I was pregnant with Michaela at the time. The phone rang, and it was him. I didn’t believe it at first, and I still don’t know who put him in touch with me. But have you ever talked to him? He’s got such a sweet voice. So persuasive. You don’t hear enough voices like that.
“Eventually, I believed it was him. He asked me if I could leave the flue open in the chimneys that I swept. I remember his concern. He said, ‘I wouldn’t ask this of an Alaskan because of the cold, but I figured in Hawaii. . . .’ I said, ‘Sure.’ Ever since, he’s been using nothing but chimneys on Kauai.”
THERE ARE WEATHERMEN with radar helping Santa Claus, there are sweeps with brooms, and there are many others in between. There is a physicist—at Harvard, no less—whose name is Dr. Melissa Franklin. A Canadian by birth (“We’re so proud that Santa’s first North American settlement was in Goose Bay”), Franklin has been teaching at the august institution since 1985. “I really haven’t done much to help Santa, just a few simple calculations. As The Mission became more complex and the speeds faster, Santa needed to determine an optimal weight for the sleigh. He wanted to know what was the most cargo he could carry without sacrificing speed. I did wind-tunnel tests on a sleigh just like his. He gave me the dimensions, and we built a model here at the university. Then we computed the drag coefficient—how the wind passes most smoothly over the sleigh. Then I crunched some numbers in the computer, and gave him a figure. If the reindeer are averaging under three hundred pounds each and Santa has watched the cookies—one-fifty is his best weight, and that’s a strong one-fifty since he’s barely three feet tall—then he can pack more than a ton of loot on each trip.”
Dr. Franklin is being modest when she adds, “Anyone could have done the math, really. Santa himself, if he had the time and the right computer software. But I was pleased to be asked.”
So was Oran Young, Helper Extraordinaire. “Like Melissa, I think of myself as one of Santa’s Eggheads,” he says. “I get the sense he was happier when he could do this thinking and plotting for himself. But he realizes that in the modern age he needs the help of the eggheads.”
Young serves as a coordinator. His Instit
ute of Arctic Studies has long been involved with the airlines in helping regulate traffic flow over the North Pole. “The increase in circumpolar flights has been exponential since 1970,” he says. “The world has become a much smaller place with faster and faster planes, and now it’s a short hop from London to Hong Kong—over the top.
“So what I do is, I talk to the major airlines. I negotiate a one-night moratorium of their great circumpolar routes. Everyone cooperates, and I think everyone’s happy to.
They understand the problem. I mean, Santa’s banging in and out of the Pole all night long, and if these big birds are zipping around at 30,000 feet, there’s eventually going to be a problem, a terrible accident. So everyone clears the air over the Pole for thirty-one hours. And this is not just a U.S. thing. Aeroflot cooperates and China Air cooperates, Qantas cooperates and Air France cooperates. This annual moratorium stands, really, as a testament to the kind of man Santa is.”
Former President of the United States George Bush confirms and concurs. “It’s just as Oran says, we do it because of who Santa is, what he does, what he stands for,” says Bush, speaking from his office in Houston. “I didn’t know one blessed thing about this before I got to the White House. Then during my first term as President—probably about October of 1989—I was presented with this longstanding agreement that all Presidents sign-off on each year. This was the international accord that directs our airlines to watch themselves, and to clear that airspace up there, up there, up there over the Pole. I didn’t think for a minute, not a minute. I looked at the thing and I said, ‘For Santa Claus? Sure.’ I signed immediately. He’s a great ambassador for peace and fellowship in this world. America absolutely should be in the business of encouraging his work.”
PRESIDENTS ARE HELPERS, and so are hobbyists. Robert Andreas of Croton-on-Hudson, a town just up the river from New York City, is a copy editor in Manhattan. By night, he is an amateur astronomer of high reputation. “I’ve been doing star charts for Santa for five or six years now, and I’ve never worked for a sweeter person. It’s basically stuff that Santa himself used to do—advanced celestial navigation and so forth. He could do it still, he certainly has the expertise—just look at that world map he drew, the one they found in Norway in 1654. But he’s just gotten so busy that he now farms out some of these smaller, niggling jobs.
“I told Bill Clinton that signing the Santa Claus clause was just about the nicest thing he’d get to do each year. ”
– GEORGE BUSH, former U.S. President and Helper
“I got brought into the network by Oran Young. The Helpers quite often tip Santa off to someone else, and then he calls. I’ll be honest with you, my biggest contribution to The Mission was probably putting Santa in touch with a veterinarian. Her name’s Joan Regan. She’s down in Pennsylvania, and you should call her. She’s got a lovely tale to tell. Of all the Helpers, I think she has probably helped the most. Call on her—You’ve got to hear Joan’s story.”
THE CALL IS MADE , and Dr. Regan of Haverford tells the tale: “Well, how it came about was, Bob asked if I’d ever worked with reindeer. I laughed and said we didn’t have a lot of reindeer in greater Philadelphia. He said, ‘Well you might have one tomorrow.’
“When I awoke, there was a Peary caribou in my backyard, holding its left foreleg off the ground. I hadn’t the foggiest idea how it had gotten there. It was like the unicornin-the-garden story.
“I went out, and found that there was a note attached to its antlers. I’ve saved the note, of course. I’ll read it to you. It says, ‘Dear Dr. Regan, My name is Donder, and it seems I have hurt my leg while running. The vets where I come from are very capable, but they work mostly with herbal medicines, and my handler says he believes surgery is needed. Time is of the essence. Could you help me? It is important to me—and to others—that this injury be treated properly. And so my trainer has sent me to you, as you come very highly recommended. I would appreciate it if you could help me. And so would my owner.’
“That’s the whole note. No signature, no hoof print.
“So, anyway, I went to work on the leg. I ultrasounded it, and found that the injury wasn’t as serious as the trainer had feared. Trainers have been known to overreact. The Peary had tendinitis, and this responded to antiinflammatory medication and a bit of rest. I waited for the owner to call, or to come over and pick up his reindeer. No one ever did.
“That’s it. End of story.
“Somehow, this deer named Donder got out of the backyard pen, and I never saw him again.”
Regan pauses, then smiles.
“There is a postscript,” she says. “I think it was perhaps September, maybe even October when I treated Donder. I waited patiently through November, but I never got any payment—no check in the mail, no token of thanks, not even a letter or card of acknowledgement. And then, on Christmas morning, I came downstairs and under my tree was a little reindeer, and it had a splint on its left foreleg. Out in the backyard was an ice-sculpture that looked just like Donder.
“Now do you suppose. . . .”
OF COURSE YOU DO. And so does Joan Regan—Dr. Joan Regan. And so does Melissa Franklin—Dr. Melissa Franklin. And so does Robert Andreas and Oran Young and Lisa Patrick and Al Roker and Tony Vecchio and Ken Campbell and Will Steger and Phil Cronenwett and Einar Gustavsson and Bil Gilbert and, yes, even former President George W. Bush and Sir Edmund Hillary themselves—and anyone else who has bothered to think about Santa Claus.
Dr. Regan took a snapshot of “Donder” in ’87. This gift now adorns the mantle above her fireplace.
Of course you suppose it is him.
And this brings a smile to your face, as it does to the face of Joan Regan.
But why is it him? What have we done to deserve him?
“That is something,” says Joan Regan, “that I wonder about each and every night. It is something I mull over as I lie in bed. It’s a mystery. But it’s a nice mystery, and whatever the answer is doesn’t really matter. Because whatever it is, it makes me feel warm inside. It helps me to sleep peacefully. It gives me great hope. It makes me want to wake up, tomorrow.”
AFTERWORD
Like Down on a Thistle, Evermore
Work That Never Ends
DASHER, Dancer, Prancer and Vixen are not immortal. Comet, Cupid, the now-healed Donder and Blitzen are special but aging deer. Rudolph too. He’s a real Peary, with the aches and pains of a real Peary. You should see him each December 26th—he is one sore animal.
They are getting older, yes, but these special reindeer of the North Pole count time in a different way than we do. Consider: The Big Eight of Santa’s squad have been a team for 2,000 years—with Rudolph, they’ve been a team for 1,500—but it is clear, from the testimony of Steger and others, that they will remain a team throughout your lifetime, your children’s lifetimes and all the lifetimes of your children’s children’s grandchildren. For a thousand more trips—and more than that—Santa Claus will drive the same famous group of reindeer. “He told me so,” says Will Steger. “And I believe everything that he told me, without question.”
Think back, with Steger’s testimony in mind, to where our search began. Do you remember the vision that the ancient Inuit of Kuujjuaq saw outlined against the moon, the one captured in leather with a hunting knife? That is exactly the same vision you can spy out your midnight window, if you are very, very lucky—and the reindeer are in glide, traveling very, very slowly. You and your descendants and theirs and theirs. What a thought that is! What an opportunity each of us has.
“He did say,” Steger adds, “that thousands of years in the future, he’ll have to replace his legendary deer. One by one, they’ll be too old. At that point, some phenomenal flier from the training group will be given the nod, and will be hitched to the Christmas sleigh. I wouldn’t want to be one of those youngsters, not on the maiden voyage. What pressure! Can you imagine being the one who replaces Dasher? Dancer?”
When the day finally does come, the famo
us old deer who have performed so nobly will undoubtedly enjoy a serene retirement. They will silently impart advice to the new kids on the team, then just lie around the stable. They’ll spend their golden years remembering all those bygone Christmas Eves, all the adventures, all the places, all the glories. The fur near their antlers will slowly go gray. They’ll watch The Christmas Mission lifting off, and tears will roll softly down toward their noses.
But not yet, and not soon. The same Santa Claus express that our world has come to love will be on the job for a long time yet. The team’s members have, as we have seen, learned to cope with our modern times. They have taken on the heavier and heavier burden of serving an ever more populous planet. They have—always, every year—served as perfectly and generously as they have served quietly and modestly. These small, strong, silent deer: They are the best this earth can offer.
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