Christmas Stake

Every reindeer on this branch is female.

Reindeer are the only deer in the world in which the females grow antlers too — and the timing is the giveaway. Bulls shed theirs in late autumn, not long after the rut, and spend the winter bare-headed. Cows keep theirs straight through until spring, when the calves come.

Which means any team pulling a sleigh on Christmas Eve, antlers up, is a team of cows. Nobody has ever put that on a card. It has been true the whole time.

The team itself is younger than people assume. Eight reindeer, named, arrive in 1823 in "A Visit from St. Nicholas," published anonymously in a Troy, New York newspaper — and two of them came out as Dunder and Blixem, Dutch for thunder and lightning, before a century of reprints wore them down to Donner and Blitzen. The ninth reindeer is younger still. Rudolph was written in 1939 by a copywriter at Montgomery Ward, to be given away free to children in the store at Christmas. Two and a half million copies went out the first year.

We had this one cut as a scene hung from a branch: the sleigh, the driver with his hand up, and the team out ahead of him with the traces stretched.

Set it where it will be lit from behind — over the walk, on the tree by the drive, above the mailbox. It reads best at dusk, which in December is most of the afternoon.

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