(A holiday utopian fable, crossposted from The Field...)
Poor Rudolph: It had been sixty years since Johnny Marks had written that "red nosed reindeer" song about him in 1948. Gene Autry had gilded it in '49, and all these years of pulling the fat man in the sleigh had worsened Rudolph's arthritis.
The surgeries he'd endured to keep him going xmas eve after frozen xmas eve were taking their toll. And the rehearsals! "Those damn rehearsals!" Rudolph shouted at his fellow reindeer on December 23. "If Santa didn't insist on this practice session we wouldn't be stranded here right now, somewhere in Siberia."...
"What happened to your nose?" asked Donder.
"It sure is dark in this blizzard," added Blitzen.
And there they were, eight reindeer and Rudolph, shivering their sacks off somewhere in the tundra of Russia.
"The North Pole doctors put that bionic one on my face last year, remember?" Rudolph lamented. "And the bulb ran out!"
They wandered for hours that dark and snowy night, shivering, lost, hungry, unable to fly through the skies because in the snowstorm they could not see far enough in front of them. That was tough enough back in the 1940s, but now with hundreds of jet planes crisscrossing the skies - and that unfortunate collision with a Boeing 747 that lost Comet and Cupid their lives back in '94 - the reindeer weren't going to chance it.
"Guys!" shouted Vixen. "What's that light up ahead?"
"Maybe food!" cried Dasher, and they galloped toward it.
Coming closer, a silhouette could be seen illuminated by a red ember light. "It looks like a red nosed reindeer, except with a hump," Dancer exclaimed.
"Hey!" shouted Rudolph across to the shadowed figure with the lit-up nose. "Hey, you!" ("Mom?" he thought.) And the eight reindeer skidded to a stop and came face to face with the strangest looking reindeer they had ever seen, smoking a cigarette.
The cigarette's glow turned the horrid darkness into an oasis of light that revealed stacks and stacks of unopened boxes surrounding the reindeer-with-a-hump. "Hello, boys and girls," the figure spoke, lighting another smoke. "I'm Joe. What are y'all doing way out here in Siberia."
"I'm Rudolph!" responded the bionic reindeer, holding out his hoof to offer a terrorist fist bump. "And we're lost, trying to find our way back to the North Pole. And you, Joe, what are you doing way out here in brrrsville?"
"It's a long story, but you kids look like you aren't going anywhere," Joe replied. "Pull up a box and I'll tell you..."
"Once upon a time, I was the toast of every town, king of the airwaves and the glossy magazine ads. I wore tuxedos and top hats and got invited to every party," he began, taking a long, slow drag off his fag then exhaling the smoke through his gigantic nostrils, dragon-style.
"I was the poster-camel for a brand of cigarettes, the sales-dromedary of international fame and renown, the even-towed ungulate for bohemian pleasure, nightlife, and sex-symbol for all womankind..."
Suddenly, a huge "thump" cracked through the air. Joe and the reindeers looked over to find that Donder - who has gained a few pounds since he was immortalized through stop-motion animation - had sat upon a box and it splintered underneath him. Cartons of cigarettes sprawled out onto the snow below.
"Free samples!" explained Joe, the camel. "When they shipped me off to exile, that was all the severance pay I got."
"But, but, you seem like such a nice guy," said Rudolph. "Why would they exile you?"
"Oh, first some buttinskis claimed that I was too popular with the children and that my irresistible smile encouraged them to smoke," Joe answered. "Then the feminists said the most hurtful things, that my nose looked like a penis. Soon the torches and pitchforks were out for me. It was a witch hunt. And then they passed a law to take me off the TV and radio, banned me from stadiums and sporting events, and finally they banned my products even in the clubs of New York City! They put me on a military plane, took away my passport, and dumped me here."
Vixen picked up a carton of smokes, opened it, bit open a pack and stuck a cigarette in her mouth. Joe lit it for her. "Now, there's a gentleman!" she exclaimed. "I can see why the ladies loved you."
Not wanting to be outdone by the charismatic camel, the rest of the reindeer picked up cigarettes and began puffing on them. "Hey," remarked Blitzen, "these are good!"
Now with ten cigarettes blazing, they had created a circle of light out there in the night snowstorm. "I have an idea!" shouted Rudolph. "These cigarettes are like headlights! With them, we can get back to the North Pole in time for Christmas and light Santa's sleigh!"
"Will you come with us, Joe?" Vixen batted her eyelashes. "The North Pole is great. And we only have to toil one night of the year!"
And so the reindeer set to work loading the boxes of free samples on their backs and with Joe and his cigarette in the lead they made it back to the North Pole without incident or accident.
Santa and Mrs. Claus greeted them at the door. "Ho, ho, ho, it's Joe Camel!" he jumped with joy.
"You guys know each other?" asked Rudolph.
"We go way back," Santa answered. "We used to share the same agent in New York!" Joe handed Santa a gift pack of smokes, and more to the elves, they smoked and whistled while they worked, and there never had been a happier or more industrious day before Christmas on the North Pole.
Christmas Eve came and the North Pole doctors were still unable to fix Rudolph's nose. Santa approached Joe, and said, "Joe, with your smokes so bright, won't you guide my sleigh tonight?"
And off they went around the world to the rooftops of every home, down the chimneys, leaving gifts and stuffing stockings. And Joe Camel had learned the meaning of Christmas: Giving. He made sure to carefully place a pack of cigarettes with some matches in every child's sock.
The next morning, the children of the world awoke. In previous years, they had fought over presents with their siblings and rich kids told poor kids that Santa knew they'd been bad and that's why they had fewer gifts under their trees. But this Christmas morning was different. Parents arrived in living rooms to find something they had never witnessed before: their kids calm and happy, sharing their presents as they smoked their first cigarettes.
Moms exclaimed, "wow, this stuff is better than Ritalin for the younguns!" Dads cheered, "look honey, they left some free samples for us, too!" They snuck back upstairs to go make more kids for future Christmases to come, while the children played contently in the neighborhood, giving their toys away and lighting each other's cigarettes. This went on in every language and in all lands, and peace had enveloped the planet, at last.
For generations to come that great day would be celebrated and remembered as the day that children ceased to fight, nations stopped declaring wars, the wealthy redistributed their bounty, people started minding their own business and tolerating their neighbors, and nobody ever went hungry or homeless again. Thanks to an exiled camel and his great big heart, the true spirit of Christmas had finally arrived.
And forevermore, in prayers before holiday feasts, parents would tell this story to their children - which the kids had memorized by heart - and at the final stanzas of this glorious epic poem they would giggle and shout in unison with glee:
"It was a Joe Camel Christmas!"