https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=2z87XnoXrjo
So a few times in the past, people have made some jokes. I’ve seen jokes on Twitter, on Facebook, even in YouTube comments. People say, you know, why don’t you do the symbolism of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer? There’s somehow a joking element to that question. But I thought that I would dive into the symbolism of Rudolph, because I think that in the figure of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, we do have the an image of a birth of a mythological figure where it Rudolph seems to more than the Marvel superheroes, more than the Star Wars world, seems to be playing a much more mythological function than all those other characters. And so we’ll look at why that is and why his story seems to fit in order for Rudolph to to enter into a more participatory mode. This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world. So kind of like the modern Santa Claus is a rather modern figure. You know, the figure of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is even more recent. In fact, we even know who created Rudolph. His name is Robert Louis May and created him in 1939, wrote a small pamphlet, which was published by Montgomery Ward department store. And since then, right away, the figure of Rudolph entered into the common imagination. And it seems like Rudolph has. Become the closest thing to a kind of mythic structure that we have in the modern world, let’s say, I would say even more than Star Wars, even more than the Marvel comics. And I will give you a few of the elements which make us understand that so that you can see how wide it is that Rudolph seems to be playing a kind of mythological role, let’s say. So one of the ways that you can know that Rudolph is playing such a mythological form is that most people don’t know who created him. Even though he does have a definite author, we don’t feel like Rudolph has been created by someone in particular. We just feel like he kind of rose up out of, you know, the folkloric ancient folklore and just appeared as this figure, which completes the story of Santa Claus. And so that is something that is important, understanding these why, how a story becomes mythological. It actually has to become more removed from its, let’s say, more mundane. It’s more mundane source. You know, one of the reasons why the Marvel comics are also approached the mythological structure is because although they were created by actual people, because they end up being handled by all these different kinds of people, there is there is almost a kind of complex system which sets itself up, which weeds out some elements of the story, keeps some, adds some. And there’s this this selection process which creates a figure that has more, let’s say, more ontological force. And so in the case of Rudolph, it seems like right away was there at the beginning, but we just forgot who it is that created him. And Rudolph became a character on his own who who just manifests the story of Santa Claus. So why is it that he’s so powerful? Now, one of the reasons why Rudolph is so powerful is because in the very structure of the story, he manifests something about the relationship between the end and the beginning. And so Rudolph is in the story of Christ. There’s this image that Christ is the stone that was rejected by the builder, has become the angle stone or the capstone. Sometimes the better term to understand it, the keystone, which holds the arch together, that is that maybe the best way to understand what Christ is. So it’s the stone that’s different from all the other stones. Let’s say you’re building an arch. You have all these stones that are the same. And then at the end, you need something to hold the arch together. And then you see this one stone that is different from all the others. And that’s the last stone that you put together, which holds it all together. And so in that sense, Christ has that talks about that process, which is that something which is doesn’t seem to fit through the whole process can at the end appear to be the very source of the of that process. And that’s what we see in the story of Rudolph. Now, in the story of Rudolph, it fits our modern way of thinking as well, which is the kind of the underdog mentality, which I talked about a little bit in my video about equality and sub and inversion. You know, it fits the notion of the the the underdog who’s rejected, that nobody loves and then finally becomes the hero. But in this, it’s more than just becomes the hero. Although although the story of Rudolph does follow that that trope, which you see in every single movie, which is that someone is rejected at the beginning and at the end, everybody celebrates him, you know, is it there’s something a bit deluded about that story. But in the story of Rudolph, it’s that he actually becomes the head of the sleigh. And so structurally, he goes from being marginalized and rejected to becoming exceptional at the at the edge of the sleigh. And so it’s not just that he overcomes his difficulties and then becomes the hero. It’s that the very thing that makes him exceptional and makes him rejected is the thing which makes him ultimately come to the head of the sleigh and lead the other reindeer. And so you have this this relationship between the transformation of the end into the beginning. But also what you have is if you look at the at Santa’s sleigh, you if you kind of understand it now, all of a sudden something like a Christmas tree, you’ll see by adding Rudolph to the top of the sleigh, you bring the sleigh together into this point. And so think of the sleigh as the Christmas tree. You have Rudolph at the top. You have the shining exceptional light. You have the star. You have the angel, which is at the top. You have the principality of the of the of the tree. And so and then in the tree, I’ve talked about this in my video about trees. In the tree, you have all these shining other shining lights, which are lesser than the top one, which are which shouldn’t you know, you shouldn’t have an ornament in your tree, which is attracting more attention than the star. The stars should be the top ornament, should be the one that kind of everything all leads to. And so you have all these other lights inside, these other smaller principalities. And then finally, you have the bottom of the tree in which you have the potentiality of the world, which in which you have the wrapped gifts that are hidden in potentiality. And so when you put if you imagine the sleigh of Santa Claus going up, you have the exact same structure. All of a sudden you have Rudolph at the top as the principality, as as the exceptional light at the top. And then you have the different reindeer that are like stars, that are like other principalities. And then finally, you have the sleigh, which acts, you know, acts literally as a bowl. And in that bowl, now you have this big sack full of gifts that are hidden inside and you don’t know who it goes to and you don’t know what’s inside. And so you have the very structure of reality is represented by the by the structure of the sleigh, you know, by the rate Rudolph at the top with all the reindeer and Santa Claus at the bottom has the exact same structure as the Christmas tree and the exact same structure as the Christmas story. I’ve talked about this, how this image of the star above and, you know, the lowly bowl at the bottom with the, you know, in the darkness is the structure also of the Nativity icon. You have the star above, you have all the the the angels which are singing. You have also the the shepherds which are hearing. And so you have kind of this link between heaven and earth. And then you have in this dark cave, in the manger, in the place where the animals eat, in the very all these images of this dark potentiality is where you have the hidden principalities, the ones that aren’t manifest yet. And you have the one in the story of Christianity. You have that which will which ultimately also go rise up to the top. But in the story of Santa Claus, that’s not necessarily the idea. It’s more this idea of this potentiality, potential treasures that are hidden in darkness. And so you can see that once. So when someone kind of came up with the idea of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, it is an owned property. You know, it’s it’s it’s actually not a mythic thing. It’s owned by something called the what is it? The Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Corporation or something. And so it’s owned by. So the image of Rudolph is owned by the corporation. But we don’t get the sense that that’s it. And I don’t think they can actually control the image of Rudolph. You know, it has entered so much into our folklore that they have to be careful not to control it too much or else it’s going to backfire against them. And so it seems like like the image of Rudolph is probably there to stay in the story of Santa just because it actually takes up a space in the story that was missing, something which was kind of calling to be filled. And, you know, the fact that some guy came up with it almost doesn’t matter. What really matters is that it it ends up recreating the right pattern, the pattern that we recognize, the pattern that is the same as the Christmas tree, the same as as nativity, the Nativity of Christ itself. And so it’s interesting to see, it’s interesting to see that even despite the fact that the let’s say we could we could surmise that the rise of Santa Claus and the rise of figures like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer are in a way are there to to push aside the more Christian element of Christmas and to try to find secular alternative to Christmas and we can kind of see that as a frustrating thing and a subversive element in in Christmas. But we can also do the do just as these things are trying to push them aside. What we can do is actually show how even though they try to, they end up manifesting the same pattern as the Nativity. And so in the very act of trying to cast aside the Nativity of Christ, they end up reaffirming it by manifesting the same pattern. And so as Christians, as people who want to celebrate Christmas, I think the best way to deal with these stories is to integrate them and to try to show how they are just one more image of this transformation, which happened two thousand years ago, this child that was born in a manger, which revealed to us the mysteries of the universe and helped and gave us a way to enter into this mystery of the incarnation, showing us what the solstice ultimately refers to, what these other even pagan images ultimately refer to. And so so I hope that everybody I want to wish all of you guys. And I’m doing this just for patrons. So I want to thank you. Take the chance to thank you for your support. This year has been really crazy for me, as you know, but it has also been really wonderful to watch people kind of gather around this channel on the Facebook group. Now we have a clips channel. All these people kind of volunteering their time, writing great posts on the Facebook group. It’s just been exciting to watch all of this happen. And so your support is what has been making it possible. Now, I have I hire people to do the to put up my videos at podcast. I hire people to manage the website. I have also hired an assistant to help me with carving to free myself from that. These days, I haven’t hired someone to edit my videos so much just because I’ve stopped making movie videos. But maybe that might be coming to at some point again as things continue to progress. So once again, thank you for your support. And I wish you again a Merry Christmas. As we say in the Orthodox Church, I’m saying it early because I won’t talk to you guys before Christmas. Christ is born. Glorify him.