Every Christmas I Am Reminded That Reindeer Are Real Animals 

It’s true.

I find nothing odd about this and my logic, I believe, is unimpeachable if you allow it to be. Santa’s sleigh is powered (flown? buoyed?) by reindeer. Santa Claus is not real. Ergo, reindeer must not be real. Further, the most popular reindeer on Earth is a fictional outcast with a bulbous crimson snout. Doesn’t exactly help the case for reindeer!

Alright, I kid. Sort of. The real reason I forget that reindeer are real is because when does anyone ever really think about reindeer? Also, I don’t care. For starters, I live in Los Angeles, California and the animal population of icy tundras does not interest me. (Though, to be fair, the subject didn’t interest me when I lived in cities that dipped below 40 degrees either.)

Regular deer do pop into my head occasionally when I remember them running through the backyard of my childhood home or when someone I know hits one with their car. There’s also the unfortunate fact that the reindeer population is shrinking which certainly doesn’t help.

The most puzzling part of all this is that here in North America, apparently, we call reindeer “caribou”. If you called me up on June 27th and asked if I thought caribou were real animals, I would probably say yes and then start craving a nice tall tumbler of chilled Caribou Lou because of the word association.

Perhaps reindeer should work on their marketing strategy if they’d like to be remembered by me!

Still, every year like clockwork, something jogs my memory. Perhaps some rich asshole has flown out a bunch of reindeer to give his girlfriend a magical bullshit Christmas proposal. Maybe a week after Thanksgiving, The Today Show pulls some stunt to kick off the Christmas season and Christmas spending on GE products and they fly out some reindeer and a Santa and have him hand out coupons for 20 percent off a stainless steal dishwasher. Something like that happens and a light goes off: Oh yeah, those lil fuckers are real. Reindeer are real animals. Ha. Ha.

So here I am. I, in this moment, understand that reindeer actually exist and reside in areas of the world in which I hope to never step foot: Russia, parts of Canada that aren’t Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, Greenland. This is my truth—until New Year’s Day when I will inevitably forget that reindeer are not, in fact, fictional beasts crafted to aid the fairly unbelievable narrative of a fat man flying through the sky on a giant sled.