By Michaela Gordoni
If you need your Rudolph fix this Christmas, you can catch him on Thursday, Dec. 5, at 8 p.m. ET on NBC or on Dec. 11.
The 1964 classic, RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSED REINDEER, will also air on Freeform on Dec. 6 at 9:10 p.m., Dec. 7 at 3:30 p.m., Dec. 18 at 3:15 p.m., Dec. 19 at 4:10 p.m., Dec. 21 at 5:45 p.m., Dec. 22 at 1:35 p.m., Dec. 24 at 8:15 p.m., and Christmas Day, Dec. 25 at 5 p.m., Remind Magazine reported this month.
The little reindeer called CBS his home for over 50 years before CBS lost broadcast rights in 2023. Since then, NBC has called itself Rudolph and FROSTY THE SNOWMAN’s winter wonderland.
FROSTY THE SNOWMAN is currently available to stream on Peacock.
Related: RUDOLPH THE RED-NOSE REINDEER Turns 60 — Here’s the Beloved Movie’s Story
CBS, meanwhile, will have more modern Christmas specials with holiday episodes of GHOSTS, MATLOCK, THE NEIGHBORHOOD, SEINFIELD and PAW PATROL, as well as a broadcast of REINDEER IN HERE.
Every year, America gathers around to watch Rudolph and his pals.
“Romeo [Muller] wrote these characters to be underdogs that don’t quite fit in the world,” said Rick Goldschmidt, the official historian of Rankin/Bass Productions. “By the end of the show, they triumph, and the villains get reformed most of the time. They’re such satisfying stories.”
Rudolph’s creator was Robert L. May.
“He always wanted to write the great American novel,” said NPR host David Greene. “As life would have it, he wound up being a catalog writer at Montgomery Ward in Chicago. The department store used to give away free books to kids each Christmas, and May thought Rudolph would be a great character in one.”
“His daughter, (Barbara May Lewis), remembers her dad laboring over words, many of which would never make it into the song we now know,” Greene said.
Lewis, who was 5 at the time, inspired the story with her love for a reindeer at the local zoo, Smithsonian Magazine reported. She helped her dad with the book’s wording.
“My father read me the manuscript of Rudolph, and what I remember was not liking the word ‘stomach.’ It seemed really icky so he changed it to tummy,” she recalled.
Montgomery Ward printed over two million copies of the Rudolph book that year.
He received hundreds of letters from kids and teachers across the country. May got the rights to his story almost a decade later.
Eventually, May’s brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, set the story to song, Performing Songwriter reported. Gene Autry eventually recorded it. Marks became neighbors with Arthur Rankin of Rankin/Bass Productions. Rankin approached Marks about putting Rudolph on the screen, and then along came the $4.5 million TV special, cartoons, toys, games and a permanent American holiday legacy.
Read Next: Recent Survey Unveils RUDOLPH as American’s Favorite Christmas Movie
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