Rudolph's story embodies the American Dream for the child, writ large because of the cultural significance of Christmas.

[9] A series of postage stamps featuring Rudolph was issued by the United States Postal Service on November 6, 2014.

The retailer had been buying and giving away booklets for Christmas every year and it was decided that creating their own book would save money.

[14] The story is written as a poem in anapestic tetrameter, the same meter as "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (also known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas").

[citation needed] While May was staring out his office window in downtown Chicago, pondering how best to craft a Christmas story about a reindeer, a thick fog from Lake Michigan blocked his view—giving him a flash of inspiration.

In 1930's popular culture, a bright red nose was closely associated with chronic alcoholism and drunkards, so the story idea was initially rejected.

May asked his illustrator friend at Montgomery Ward, Denver Gillen, to draw "cute reindeer", using zoo deer as models.

[citation needed] In 1992, Applewood Books published Rudolph's Second Christmas, an unpublished sequel that Robert May wrote in 1947.

[citation needed] In 2003, Penguin Books issued a reprint version of the original Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with new artwork by Lisa Papp.

[19] The story chronicles the experiences of Rudolph, a youthful reindeer buck who possesses an unusual luminous red nose.

Mocked and excluded by his peers because of this trait, Rudolph proves himself one Christmas Eve with poor visibility due to inclement weather.

Rudolph made his first screen appearance in 1948, in a cartoon short produced by Max Fleischer for the Jam Handy Corporation that was more faithful to May's original story than Marks' song, which had not yet been written.

[6] DC Comics, then known as National Periodical Publications, published a series of 13 annuals titled Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer from 1950-1962.

[34] Filmed in stop-motion "Animagic" at Tadahito Mochinaga's MOM Productions in Tokyo, Japan, with the screenplay written by Romeo Muller and all sound recordings (with supervision by Bernard Cowan) done at the RCA studios in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the show premiered on NBC.

Additional original characters include Rudolph's love interest, Clarice; the Bumble, an abominable snow monster; and, as narrator, Sam, the Living Snowman, voiced by Burl Ives.

[35] The special and its original assortment of characters have acquired iconic status, subject to frequent parodies and homages.

Its inclusion of a villain, a love interest, a sidekick, and a strong protector are more derivative of the Rankin/Bass adaptation of the story than the original tale and song (the characters of Stormella, Zoey, Arrow, Slyly, and Leonard parallel the Rankin/Bass characters of the Bumble, Clarice, Fireball, Hermey, and Yukon Cornelius, respectively).

The movie amplifies the early backstory of Rudolph's harassment by his schoolmates (primarily his cousin Arrow) during his formative years.

Nathaniel Dominy, an anthropology professor at Dartmouth College (Robert L. May's alma mater), published a scholarly paper on Rudolph's red nose in the open access online journal Frontiers for Young Minds[37] in 2015.