I’m working today on Son of Hel, my holly-jolly Christmas novel that will attempt to harmonize the disparate accretions surrounding Saint Nicholas. Unsurprisingly, these legends can be a bit of a maze to navigate, partly because many of them, at least here in America, are the product of corporate marketing—and that means copyright issues.
As he likely was for many children, Rudolph the Red-Nosed was my favorite reindeer when I was a kid, so I wanted him to feature prominently in Son of Hel—until it occurred to me that he was very likely under copyright.
Creative Law Center has a fine article on exactly that subject. Rudolph was created by Robert L. May, who invented the character for a children’s book he wrote for Montgomery Ward. The company later granted him the copyright, which would have run out by now, but has been renewed and does not run out again until the 2030s, as permissions are now managed by the company Character Arts.
Even though the story is copyrighted, curiously, a reproduction of May’s original manuscript is available online. The original story of Rudolph is written in a doggerel imitation of Clement Clarke Moore’s famous “A Visit from Saint Nicholas,” the poem that originates most of our modern notions about Santa. Rudolph’s story in the book is more-or-less the same as that in the still-more-famous song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” which was written by May’s brother and picked up by Gene Autry.
The story of Montgomery Ward’s magnanimous granting of the copyright to the character’s creator, and his use of it to provide for his family for generations, is very Christmas-y, so I can hardly begrudge it, but it does put me in a bind. I won’t give up as easily as that; in the near future, I’ll figure out the best way to contact Character Arts. If I can’t get permission, or if the cost is prohibitive, I’ll either have to leave Rudolph out or refer to him so obliquely that I escape copyright infringement.
