Most often, my browsing takes the form of random clicking on anything that catches my eye, however, given the time of year, my surfing has been a bit more focused of late.

I have been reading an excellent book (that I have read before, but enjoy rereading annually) called The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Santa Claus (as told to Jeff Guinn). This is a wonderful story that literally gives the history of Santa, the truth about the man behind the myth and several interesting historical facts that Santa personally recounts as he traveled through history.  If you are a cheesy holiday fan like me, I heartily recommend this book. If you aren't but still enjoy a great story and a bit of history....well, I recommend it for you as well.

Having said that, I have been browsing some of the tidbits that particularly interest me from this book. And in doing so, I came across this awesome bit of information taken from a fun website called How Stuff Works.

Although Rudolph is what's called a bull -- a male reindeer -- there's a rumor that many of Santa's reindeer might be cows, or female reindeer. Why is this?

Have you ever seen pictures of Santa flying in his sleigh with his team of reindeer? If you have, you'll notice that the reindeer have fully grown antlers. The interesting thing is, though, male reindeer typically shed their antlers by early December, well before Christmas Eve. The antlers grow back in the spring, and the cycle of growth and regrowth continues. Cows keep their antlers all year long, however, so the chances that there are more females than males on Santa's sleigh are a bit higher.

This isn't to say that all of the reindeer are female and Rudolph's the only guy out there. Most males shed their antlers, but not all of them, and it's possible that a bull won't lose his antlers until after December. Accounts of Blitzen, a part of the original team of reindeer, identify him as Rudolph's father, so we know that Santa has both male and female reindeer leading his sleigh.

So there you have it:  Santa is an EOE-for the most important job on Christmas Eve, he doesn't just trust the men...he knows that when there is real work to be done, get the women involved.

Oh, the only issue I have with all this is that the movie version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer credits Donner as being Rudolph's daddy, not Blitzen.  It's a big mystery-maybe one I will try and solve after lunch.