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The call has gone out and wherever they happen to be in the world, the Herring family are returning to the UK for a big family Christmas. My sister has rented a wing of a big manor house in Somerset and over the next week, every living descendant of Keith and Barbara Herring and their partners, will be arriving.
It's an amazing thing to happen as this involves journeys from all over the world and so many people that it's impossible to count them with any certainty or if you can't be bothered (like about 20). Youngest attendee is 0, oldest is 89.
Twenty members of a family, all in a stately home full of antiques and paintings of kings. What can possibly go wrong? Stay tuned to find out.
The journey wasn't as arduous as I feared, though we narrowly avoided getting on to a gridlocked M1 and found an alternate way round. Ernie told me something I didn't know, that all the reindeer on Santa's sleigh must be female, as male reindeer shed their antlers in autumn and females do it in the summer. I had no idea that reindeer shed their antlers at all. Reindeers grow those things annually. The crazy mofos.
As all the reindeer on Santa's sleigh have antlers then they must all be female.
We then had a debate about Rudolph. They do seem to have antlers, but also they are called Rudolph and the pronouns they are given (at least in the song) are he/him. Of course these days people and reindeers can identify how they like, but I did have a strong feeling that Rudolph was a male due to the whole male name and male gendering. Phoebe agreed that he was male, but Ernie, knowing the facts about the antlers wasn't so sure.
Were the other reindeer bullying Rudolph just because of their red nose, which seems a bit weak - so their nose is a bit red, admittedly red enough to guide a sleigh through a snowstorm, but that doesn't seem a reason not laugh and call them names. I never liked the other reindeer for shunning Rudolph and then suddenly liking him when he was famous/useful, but maybe there was more to it than that. It seems that the other reindeer might have been TERFS. Would certainly explain their reluctance to allow Rudolph to join in the female reindeer games and (although this wasn't mentioned in the song) use the same toilets as them.
If they were TERFS though surely they'd never have accepted Rudolph even if Rudolph had helped Santa get through the snowy night. You'd think Santa would have had better plans than an ungulate's unusually bright proboscis to light the way through the sky. He has a flying sleigh. You'd think he could fix up some headlights which can cope with fog.
You never know, maybe Santa can use his magic so that the flying reindeer he has can have antlers all year round. And no genitalia of any kind (you certainly don't see any on the Christmas cards). He surely has to sort some system out to stop them excreting whilst flying (or on people's roofs). I think it's likely he just sews up any reindeer holes at that end, lets the reindeer eventually explode and just gets new magic reindeer for the next year. Saves him having to feed magic reindeer for the 364 days a year he has no need for them.
