A lot of elves and songwriters will tell you that the reindeer can fly (which, as we know, would make them birds). This is a widely spread misconception. It would not be the first falsity elves and songwriters passed off as common knowledge.*
This raises the question of why the reindeer was chosen as the mythical flying animal of Santa “Fred” Claus. The easy answer is that it lives in the Arctic Circle. But so does the polar bear. Can you imagine the sleigh of Father Christmas pulled by polar bears? Can you imagine that thing descending with the moon at its back, an automatic weapon in Santa’s free hand? DO YOU DARE IMAGINE IT?
The reindeer’s most immediately dangerous feature is its antlers, sharpened bone constructs attached to its cranium. It has also been known to fire concentrated light (see “Historic shames”).
Beyond these, the reindeer has crazy eyes. I do not mean that the reindeer’s eyes appear crazy, as if it were some common horse. I mean that looking into the eyes of the reindeer for too long can actually drive a man to madness.
The reindeer continues to further disenfranchise its already disadvantaged societal sectors. The rich get richer; the poor get poorer. All the while, the reindeer government is under the thrall of Big Antler Wax. The reindeer system has failed.
Number of legs
Four to sixteen.
Oh I’m sorry
I didn’t mention that antlers count as legs.
In 1937, a reindeer was born suffering from a rare case of Radolfe Syndrome. The reindeer community excommunicated him. Little did they know that the same freak genetic error that gave the reindeer a red nose would, by puberty, allow him to fire light beams. The young reindeer, having fallen in with radical anarchists, returned to the North Pole and murdered twenty-one reindeer with his nose-laser before his neck was snapped by the Abominable Snowman.
The story was the loose basis for the harrowing stop-motion cartoon “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.”
What if it fought a bear?
The bear would win, but it would be shaken by the encounter.
Is it noble?
The reindeer is mostly a good animal, but must be knocked down a few notches for its racisms.
*The first was that Santa’s sleigh has bells. It actually travels in complete silence whenever it is not blaring the horn from the General Lee.