The tale of Donder and Blitzen

You have probably heard of Donder and Blitzen, two of the magical flying reindeers that pull Santa’s sleigh through the sky every Christmas Eve. Their names mean Thunder and Lightning.

 

What you may not know however is that they got their names, when they were very young, because of their terrible tempers and because they were always fighting each other, crashing into one and other with their antlers and wrestling ferociously.

 

However, one day, something happened to them that put a stop to their quarrelling.

 

They were having a particularly noisy argument over, of all things, a carrot.

 

“I saw it first”, said Donder.

 

“No you didn’t”, said Blitzen, “I saw it first”.

 

And, as usual, to settle the argument, they started to fight, charging towards each other and lowering their antlers.

 

And then their antlers collided with a terrible crash.

 

However, when the two reindeers tried to pull themselves apart again, they realised that they couldn’t; they had crashed into each other so hard that their antlers had got stuck.

 

“This is all your fault”, said Donder to Blitzen, “Now what are going to do?”.

 

“No its not”, replied Blitzen angrily, “It’s your fault”.

 

And the bickering reindeers pulled and pulled, like a tug of war but no matter how they pulled they just couldn’t separate themselves so, eventually, exhausted they went to see Santa to ask him for help.

 

Seeing the two reindeers with their horns entangled together, Santa and his elves couldn’t help chuckling which made the two reindeers very embarrassed but then Santa said,

 

“Don’t worry. Me and my elves will think of some way of helping you. I’m sure there’s something in our workshop that will help”.

 

And so Santa and his elves got to work trying to separate the locked antlers of the reindeers.

 

At first they tried sawing through them but this only wore away the teeth of their saws and broke their blades; then they tried hammering them but their hammers, even though their heads were made of hardened steel, only shattered and so then they tried drilling through them but their drills only became blunt. No matter what they tried they just couldn’t break through the reindeers antlers to free them and, eventually, Santa had to tell them,

 

“I’m sorry, but because you’re magical reindeers, normal tools just won’t work on your antlers. I’m afraid that you two are simply going to have to get used to being stuck together”.

 

Neither of the reindeers liked the sound of this but what else could they do?

 

And so Donder and Blitzen did their best to live with their horns locked together.

 

Whenever they wanted to drink water or eat hay they would have to lower their heads together and whenever they wanted to sleep they would have to lie down together and share a pillow and a blanket between them.

 

Eventually however, the two reindeers got so used to being stuck together that they started becoming very good friends and instead of arguing over things like carrots, as they had in the old days, they would just share them.

 

“You have the carrot, you saw it first”, the other reindeers would overhear Donder say to Blitzen.

 

“Oh no, you have the Carrot”, Blitzen would reply, “It’s only fair”.

 

And then, one day, Donder and Blitzen were remembering all the times that they had fought one and other over silly things and both of them started to feel very ashamed.

 

“Oh, I am sorry”, said Donder to Blitzen, “I don’t know why I got so angry with you”.

 

“It’s me who should apologize to you”, said Blitzen to Donder, “It’s me shouldn’t have lost his temper”.

 

But then, suddenly, as if a magic spell had been broken by their apologies, the antlers of the reindeers became unstuck.

 

“I’m free”, said Donder, excitedly, dancing round in a circle.

 

“So am I”, said Blitzen, jumping for joy.

 

And they were both so happy that they ran to show Santa.

 

But then while they were telling Santa all about how their horns become unstuck, suddenly, Santa Clause’s eyes lit up.

 

“Why listening to your story”, he said, chuckling, “Has just given me an idea for a fabulous new toy”.

 

“New toy”, asked Blitzen.

 

“You’ll see”, said Santa going off to his workshop, excitedly.

 

And when Santa came out again he showed both the reindeers his new toy, a strange object made of shiny card and coloured paper in fact he even asked them to test it; he put one end of the toy in Donders mouth and other end in Blitzens mouth and he told them both to pull with all their might and when they pulled, suddenly, there was a loud bang.

 

“I call it a Christmas cracker”, said Santa Clause.

 

And after that Donder and Blitzen helped pull Santas sleigh bringing his new toy to everyone; they all had a fabulous Christmas and most importantly Donder and Blitzen, ever after, remained the best of friends.