On this day in 1976, Robert Lewis May died. His fame rests as the author who in 1939 wrote the story of Rudolph for which his brother-in-law, Johnny Marks, wrote a tune in 1948  titled Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. By the following year it was released as a recording, one that would become one of the most successful Christmas songs of all time.

How Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer became a huge success began as a simple request by Robert May’s boss at Montgomery Ward, the mail-order giant. The advertising executive asked May, the department’s copywriter, to write a cherry Christmas story in booklet form with an animal theme for its customers. In previous years Montgomery Ward gave away coloring books to its customers, but decided in 1939 to create its own booklet to save money.

At the time May was beset with problems at home. His wife, Evelyn, was suffering from an advanced case of cancer. His station in life was considerably less than what he had been used to. Raised in an affluent Jewish family in New Rochelle, New York, and graduating from Dartmouth College in 1926 with Phi Beta Kappa honors, his road ahead seemed quite promising. Then the stock market crashed in 1929 and with it the loss of his family’s wealth. Sometime during the 1930s he moved to Chicago, taking on a low-paying job as a copywriter for Montgomery Ward.

May took to the task and began the story of Rudolph in earnest. Drawing upon his memory as a painfully shy child, he decided to use a singular reindeer as the main character for the story. He was also mindful that his daughter Barbara loved the reindeer at the Chicago Zoo. It was during that early stage of writing Rudolph in July 1939 when Evelyn died. In light of her death, May’s boss offered him release from the story assignment, but May refused. Spurred on by grief and by his daughter’s encouragement, May wrote and rewrote the story, constantly reading it to Barbara for her approval until both agreed in late August 1939 that the final version was ready for Montgomery Ward.

The story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was first distributed to 2.4 million store customers during the 1939 Christmas season. They loved it! Due to World War II restrictions and the consequent shortage of paper, it wasn’t until 1946 when the company reissued the story to the tune of 3.6 million copies.

Although Montgomery Ward owned the copyright to the Rudolph story and despite the story’s tremendous appeal, Sewell Avery, the company president, as a gesture of eternal gratitude gave May the copyright to the story. Rudolph eventually was updated and published in 1947 as a colorfully illustrated book by a small New York publishing company.  It became an instant best-seller.

May eventually married an employee of Montgomery Ward. Her name was Virginia, a devout Catholic, and together they had five children. May was also famous for  growing the most amazing tomatoes, some of which grew to 12 feet tall. His fame,though, largely rests for penning a favorite holiday story that was borne out of grief and a sense of not belonging, ultimately becoming triumphant through the love of a child.

Robert L. May

Also on this day in 1871, John Wesley Work, Jr. was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Considered one of the first, if not the first, serious black collector of Negro folk songs, he too studied Latin and Greek, as well as history, and taught the two classic languages after he received a Master’s degree from Fisk University in 1898.

For the next twenty-five years Work Jr. became a leader in the effort to study and preserve Negro spirituals. At the same time he organized Fisk singing groups, and with the help of his wife Agnes and his brother Frederick Jerome Work, collected and published a number of collections of slave songs and spirituals. The first of these collections was New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers (1901).

Six years later he published, and may have composed, the remarkable spiritual Go Tell It on the Mountain, as part of New Jubilee Songs and Folk Songs of the American Negro.

Many of the spirituals the Works collected had originally been sung by their forebears as they toiled in the fields, or at difficult manual labor, during the dark age  of slavery. It was one way of establishing relationships and feeling that God was near. The story of Christmas, of God’s Son being born as man to redeem and free man of his sins, was important in itself and as a symbol of hope in their quest for freedom

The legacy of Negro spirituals was important to Work Jr. as he became both the leader and performer of the Fisk University Jubilee Singers, the historic choral group founded in 1871 for the purpose of  raising funds for the post-Civil War black college whose severe financial problems almost shut the school down. The Jubilee Singers, who took their name from the year of freedom in the Bible, were quite successful on their tours of the United States and Europe, which included a bravo performance for Queen Victoria of England, and in the process they raised the Negro spiritual to an art form.

For eighteen years Work Jr. served as leader of the Jubilee Singers until negative opinion set in at Fisk against the Negro spiritual as only a painful reminder of slavery. This groundswell of negative feelings toward black folk music forced Work Jr. to resign his leadership post in 1923. For the balance of his life, he served as president of Roger Williams University until his death on September 7, 1925.

John Wesley Work, Jr.

On this day in 1866, the Rev. John Mason Neale died. A humble and scholarly Anglican priest, his reputation largely rests with his research and translations of ancient Greek and Latin religious texts, tasks that must have come easily to him since he was proficient in twenty-one different languages. The contributions of Neale to the revitalization of ancient and medieval church hymns and his deft translations of them cannot be underestimated. The brilliant scholar was known to have lamented the Reformation’s neglect of the rich history of hymnody, despite the movement’s praiseworthy restoration of worship and song to the language of the common people.

The Rev. Neale was also a well-respected composer of Christmas carols and hymns, some of which were delivered as a result of translating centuries-old hymns and songs, including those of a secular strain.

Three of those carols have grown quite popular since the publication of his 1853 collection Neale’s Carols for Christmastide. The most sacred was the carol hymn Veni, Emmanuel (O Come, O Come Emmanuel) based upon the Latin great O Antiphons of Advent whose seven verses are believed to have been composed by monastery monks who sang one verse per day at Vespers, the late afternoon or early evening canonical hour of prayer, for seven straight days prior to Christmas Eve.

Good Christian Men, Rejoice, the second carol, was Neale’s loose English translation of one of Germany’s best-loved carols, In Dulci Jubilo. Neale found the melody of this medieval Latin-German carol in Piae Cantiones, the famous 1582 Swedish book of carols that also produced the tune for Good King Wenceslas, the third familiar carol. For the latter, Neale was looking for a good role model for children. He found it in King Wenceslas of Bohemia who was known to be a just and merciful king and having considerable compassion for the poor and sick.

It could be said that King Wenceslas was also a role model for Neale himself since he, too, led an exemplary life by dedicating his  life to the less fortunate. The hymn composer had a penchant for caring for the lowliest on society’s scale, and his Christian deeds set him apart from other clerics holding more lofty positions in the Anglican Church.

Such was Neale’s station in life that his own bishop, imagining Neale of Roman Catholic leanings, prohibited him from performing any ministerial duties and relegated him to a seemingly less desirable post. Thus, in 1846 Neale was made warden of Sackville College, a position he held for the rest of his life. Sackville College, however, was actually an almshouse, a charitable residence for the poor and aged. Twelve years later the humbly intrepid, and often frail and sickly, Neale founded the Sisterhood of St. Margaret, a group dedicated to the poor, needy, and suffering. For this charitable effort he was accused of a return to nuns, again earning him the enmity of Church authorities that thought he was converting to the Roman Catholic faith. Neale’s ministry later established an orphanage, a school for girls, and a home for unwed mothers, the latter forced to close due to church and local opposition. In a nutshell, Neale’s dedication to serving the poor and indigent was on a level with that of his work with sacred texts and hymns. Each pursuit was performed tirelessly, with dignity, and for the higher good.

Emmanuel, meaning “God with us,” is a splendid title for a carol hymn. It must have held special significance to Rev. Neale as he worked among the poor. The title reaffirms the religious concept of Christ’s birth as God Incarnate dwelling among men and announcing to them his mission here on earth. In the world of the ancient Hebrew, the choice of name was made judiciously, as the name Emmanuel must have been for Neale. For the scholarly Anglican priest, the name radiated in bold light and demonstrated, coincidentally, his own essential character and purpose as a man.

Today the Rev. Neale lays in peace at St. Swithun churchyard in East Grinstead, England, close to Sackville College where he abundantly served so well those who had so little.

Rev. John Mason Neale

Rev. Charles Lewis Hutchins was born on this day in 1838. He was an Episcopal minister who graduated from the General Theological Seminary, New York City.  He is known for producing a number of books and hymnals for the Episcopalian Church, including his largest volume Carols Old and Carols New: For Use at Christmas and Other Seasons of the Christian Year (Boston: Parish Choir, 1916). The massive collection contained 751 carols, about 470 dedicated to Christmas, and it remains one of the largest ever printed in the English language. The carols were international in scope, mostly from Europe and the United States, and included both favorite and lesser known carols.

Carols Old and Carols New: For Use at Christmas and Other Seasons of the Christian Year had a limited printing of a thousand copies, but it contained unusual features for its day, such as a preface, a composer and music source index, a first-line index, and some information about the authorship of carols.

Rev. Hutchins died on August 17, 1920 in Concord, Massachusetts. He is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, a famous last resting place for some of New England’s great 19th century authors and transcendental poets, as well as Katherine K. Davis, the composer of the popular carol The Little Drummer Boy.

Charles L. Hutchins

On this day in 1397 Guillaume Dufay was born. An important Franco-Flemish composer, he was instrumental in the transition from Medieval to Renaissance music. His reputation grew during his years in Italy when he earned the sobriquet as “the greatest ornament of our age.” He was also a Catholic priest who served the choir of the Papal Chapel in Rome from 1428 to 1443. It is understandable then why much of his musical output was devoted to church liturgy, including polyphonic works for Masses. motets, and hymns, some of which were dedicated to Advent and Christmas.

Dufay’s reputation asone of the most influential composers of the 15th century was well earned, evidence of which can be found in the works of succeeding composers who emulated some elements of his musical style. His embellishment of austere medieval plainchant by employing mellifluous harmonies made singing church music more pleasant to the ear, thus elevating church music of his day and further establishing the Mass as the main platform for elaborate polyphony.

The composer’s music appeal also extended into the secular realm, for there he also made his mark felt, and his melodic style would ultimately became characteristic of the early Renaissance. There is little doubt about Dufay’s unique contributions to the evolution of Western music, and today he still holds a special place in the pantheon of great composers.

Guillaume Dufay