Susan Senator

As the Peanuts gang sing, “Christmas time is here.” And one theory bouncing around the blogwaves this season is that Yukon Cornelius was up to something else when he licked his pickaxe in Rudolph the Rednosed Reindeer. Boing Boing says it is because there is a peppermint mine in an original version, and Cornelius realized that it is this he has been looking for all the time, not silver and gold.

I say, “Balderdash!” Spare me this Scroogelike revisionism! Even if Rankin himself told me that the original didn’t contain Sam the Snowman (apparently it didn’t!) I would cover my ears and say, “blah, blah, blah, I can’t hear you!” After all, even Count Leo Tolstoy had many versions of War and Peace before it became the War and Peace we all know and love (anyone remember A Decembrist Story?).

Cornelius is licking for silver or gold. Hence the song. Hence Cornelius’ entire raison d’etre, his modus vivendi, you name the pretentious idiom. I’m sorry; you can’t just introduce a peppermint twist forty years later. This bumble just don’t bounce.