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Here's something to ponder as you deck the halls: The eight (or nine, including the red-nosed one) flying reindeer that pull Santa's sleigh as he delivers toys to all the good girls and boys around the world on Christmas Eve have traditionally been assigned masculine names (such as Rudolph and Blitzen) and depicted with masculine personalities. However, the perennial bit of Christmas humor quoted above offers physiological evidence — specifically, the presence of antlers — demonstrating that Santa's reindeer are actually all female, a suggestion borne out by the University of Alaska Fairbanks' Reindeer FAQ, which notes that only female reindeer retain their antlers much past the beginning of winter: Does the presence of antlers indicate that Santa's reindeer are really all female? Well, it's not impossible that a male reindeer could retain his antlers as late as December 24; it's just not typical. And there are some other possible explanations for Santa's reindeer having antlers, such as the following: Besides, as the web site of Alaska's Department of Fish and Game notes, Santa's reindeer are an uncommon subspecies (saintnicolas magicalus) that exhibit characteristics atypical of other subspecies of reindeer: The way we see it, male reindeer retaining their antlers into late December is not nearly as unusual as a fellow who lives at the North Pole, spends the year making toys for millions of children all over the world, and manages to deliver all of them in a single evening. If Santa could develop a way to make reindeer fly, his coming up with a way to ensure that his bulls kept their antlers until late December must have been a piece of cake.
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