Still concerning reindeer: The Donder Fiasco

"...you know Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid... and Donner... and Blitzen."

Wait. Wait. Wait. Hold the friggen phone. Did you just say 'Donner'? The reindeer's correct name is 'Donder'. It's got to be one of my all time pet-peeves about Christmas. People calling the damn reindeer in the song or otherwise 'Donner' when in reality, that is not his name.

So let's go back to where it all started:

Santa's eight reindeer first appeared on December 23rd, 1823 in a poem by a New York author Clement Clarke Moore (Some believe it was actually written by Henry Livingston) called "A Visit From St. Nicholas" more commonly known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas". The line in the poem that the names originally started with is thus:

"More rapid than eagles his coursers they came, And he whistled and shouted, and called them by name; "Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen! On, Comet! On, Cupid! On, Donder, and Blitzen! To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall! Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!"

The first writing of the poem stated that the last two reindeer were named 'Dunder' and 'Blixem' but were altered by the author himself the year before he died, when his last manuscript, a hand-written version of the poem has them labeled once and for all 'Donder' and 'Blitzen', as he obviously intended them to be.

"Donner" replaced "Donder" in the publication of the 1939 story book 'Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer', written by Robert L. May, and was later further canonized by Gene Autrey's song 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'.

The switch most likely came about when translating the poem. First of all, the original poem is not German as it is all too often announced. The last two reindeer's names were also not German, but Dutch. The original Dutch name, 'Dunder' (Donder), means Thunder, and in English, the German word is spelled 'Donner'. (And the Dutch word for lightning is 'Blixen', whereas the German word is 'blitzen'. This is probably the most likely reason it got changed in both the Rudolph book and song. Someone thought 'oh hey, it's widely accepted as a German poem, so they should be German names..." Wrong-o, fuckers. Shame to the people who did not do the proper research and just thought it okay to alter such an iconic Christmas figure, Donder, with what was easier or falsely believed to be German, instead of the correct Dutch name.

A few publications/films in modern times still call the reindeer by his proper name. The original 1934 Miracle on 34th Street, Mrs. Santa Clause, Reindeer Holiday, etc.

I am a firm 'Donder; supporter, and I still bitch, to this day, every single time I hear the damn vile Rudolph song come on the radio.