The Abominable Snow Monster: A Christmas Cryptid

The BumbleThe official name of the movie is "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," but most people refer to it as "that kinda creepy Christmas movie with the puppets."  Originally created in 1964, "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" has been unsettling children for almost three generations.

One of the most memorable characters from the movie is The Bumble, or Abominable Snow Monster of the North, the primary antagonist, a white yeti who is driven to rage by the sight of Rudolph's glowing red nose.  The Bumble "hates everything to do with Christmas," so perhaps this explains his loathing of Rudolph's nose, which is otherwise unexplained.  As with so many movie antagonists, The Bumble is evil because he is evil.  No reason - he just IS.

The Bumble was many people's first introduction to the yeti, along with the character of George from the Warner Brother cartoons.  For those children who grew up outside the range of Sasquatch (in the Pacific Northwest) and the skunk ape (in the Southeast), the character of Bigfoot was frequently presented solely through children's programming.

I have often wondered why Romeo Muller (who wrote the script) picked an "Abominable Snow Monster" as the antagonist for his movie.  Snow is the only connection the yeti has to Christmas, unless there are some connections between Saint Nicholas and the yeti that I am not aware of.

The Bumble can be quite a frightening figure to young children, who learn early that big shaggy monsters are evil and want to kill Rudolph.  The audience cheers when he is defeated, and his teeth torn out.  (That always struck me as a chilling touch, personally, particularly since one  of the champions pulling his teeth was an elf who wanted to be a dentist.)

By contrast, the legend of the yeti is fairly harmless.  It is a large, shaggy, white or light colored ape like creature which is reported in the Himalayas.  The yeti is assumed to be related (if only distantly) to its American equivalents, the Sasquatch and swamp ape.  The yeti has large feet, as well, and its footprints have been reported by the Nepalese and Tibetans for thousands of years.  As with the modern day yeti, the yeti of historical Tibetan and Nepalese lore is a distant, elusive figure.  Although some Himalayan cultures consider the yeti to be a harbinger of doom, it does not appear to be the one bringing the doom itself.  Instead, it slips away into the snowy mountains.

Interesting yeti evidence has turned up over the years, including several samples of hair which cannot be identified, a sample of scat which is not only unknown itself, but contains an unknown parasite, and several intriguing footprints.  The most recent is a cast of a footprint brought back by the Destination Truth team in December of 2007.  

Although no one has yet captured a real life Bumble, the flip side is also true - the Abominable Snow Monster is not known to disrupt Christmas activities, either here in the West, or in the Himalayan mountains from which it hails.