In America, Santa Claus travels through the night sky at magical speeds, drawn by a team of flying reindeer, visiting millions of homes and delivering gifts in a single night. How Santa Claus came to have reindeer is a subject of much speculation. Most people believe that the reindeer came from the popular poem, A Visit From Saint Nicholas by Thomas Clement which was published in a newspaper in 1823. People loved the poem, the newspapers and media got behind it and it eventually became the most popular of the Santa Claus traditions.
Why reindeer? Some say that Clement was probably drawing on Danish traditions, where Santa is known as Julemanden and arrives in a reindeer sleigh with a sack full of gifts. In Denmark, Santa Claus has companion elves, known as Juul Nisse.
Another possible source of the reindeer legend is the reindeer people. These people migrated all over Eurasia and northern Europe using reindeer as their mode of transportation. They had many legends and myths, which they brought with them wherever they migrated. One of these cultures, the Suomi, believed in a shamanic figure named Väinämöinen. He was old and wise, wore a full white beard and had flying reindeer.
In another culture, the Saami, the shaman's drum is made of reindeer hide, decorated with various symbols. One of the symbols is a reindeer sleigh. The shaman would use the drum to enter a trance-like state in which he would travel out of body on a “reindeer vision” across the Milky Way. The Saami were actually quite well known in earlier times, the Christian Churches discouraged their practices, thinking that they were demonic. The Shaman's experience was aided by drinking a powerful hallucinogenic made from mushrooms, to enhance the trance like state.
These reindeer people, like most hunter cultures, believed that all living things were of spirit and that they could enter the spirit world, communicate and gain valuable and essential knowledge to aid them in the hunt and in their endless quest for survival by living off the land.
A reindeer people legend is that reindeer were created by the sky god Hovki, for food and transportation and to lift the spirit of man up to the sun or the light. During the white nights of the Arctic, they would stretch a rope between two trees, symbolizing a gateway to the sky. Two bonfires were lit and aromatic herbs were used to make purifying smoke. The people would walk around the two bonfires, first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. This symbolized the death of the old year and the brith of the new year. The elders would then pray for health, success in the hunt and healthy sons and daughters and during the prayers each person was said to be transported on the back of a reindeer towards a world of joy and plenty, where they were blessed and renewed. They would then dance in a circle in the direction of the sun and feast.
Closer to modern times, there was much enjoyable speculation as to where Santa Claus lived. It may be that since he had reindeer, he was thought to come from areas where reindeer lived, like the North Pole, Greenland, Lapland, Finland, Norway, the far north. But it also may be that Santa Claus was thought to come from the far north, and since reindeer are used for transportation there, he ended up with reindeer.
One thing is certain, reindeer are associated with magical events and Santa Claus visiting millions of children in the space of a single night is definitely a magical event!
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