A New
Rudolph

You’ve probably heard Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer at least 100 times every Christmas season. Written by Johnny Marks and recorded by Gene Autry in 1949, it was instantly a classic selling more than 12.5 million records. Based on the story published for the Montgomery Ward Company, Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer is the story of one of Santa’s reindeer who was different than the rest of the herd.

 

Well, if you’re like us then maybe you tuned in occasionally and realized how poorly Rudolph was treated by his peers. How he was shunned and mocked and only accepted after Santa Claus utilized the very part of him that the others ridiculed him for.

 

My sister Kim is a voice teacher and children’s choir director. This year we decided to rewrite the song for her choir - keeping the lyrics we all know and the melody we all have come to love; we added additional lyrics that fit as you sing the melody twice through.

 

The song is not in the public domain - meaning that we do not have the rights to it, but we aren’t planning to sell it.  We simply want to give this option for anyone else who feels that this story could be kinder and wants to sing it with a more fulfilling ending for our friend Rudolph, one in which he embraces his uniqueness.

 

Our hope is that these new lyrics for this Children’s classic catch on telling the story with a new, necessary message that bullying is unacceptable. No one is a misfit, we are all part of the same herd.