This interpretation is valid. But I recently learned to see it a different way.

If you'll humor me, please consider this. Since Santa knows if you've been "bad or good," he knows the other reindeer have been bullies to poor Rudolph. And, while a red glowing nose is cool, it's not a useful fog light. It's just not.

So Santa "uh oh!" had an emergency where, for the first time ever, the fog was going to be too thick all over the world to deliver presents?

Nope, he set up Rudolph in a position to "lead" his peers in a situation that maybe needed a little help but was not, in any way, a true, worldwide magic-assed Santa emergency. Santa knew how to guide his reindeer to accept each other. The story of Rudolph was not about Rudolph doing something to prove himself. It was about recognizing a Rudolph in need and helping him rise to the occasion to bring him closer to his peers in a way that could heal division.

Rudolph isn't about how to triumph as a Rudolph. It's about how to be a good Santa.

(Edit: For everyone who already thought this was obvious in the story, thanks for letting this Rudolph have his epiphany anyway.)

My theory is they meant the lesson to be learned by santa and the others, through Rudolph, but they focus on him so much that you expect Rudolph to have learned or grown himself. Truth is its santa and the head elf who grow, by realizing that even outcasts have something to offer, and that being cruel is, while morally wrong, just dumb as shit because you might need a glowy reindeer snoot someday, but only if you didn't drive them to run away and die to a snow monster. Or something.

That or they just didn't think it through very well at all. Which is probably more likely. Idk. But it feels a little bit more understandable if you think of Santa as the one with the arc, not rudolph.

Well yeah.

Jesse Pinkman's life was only spared on Walter's word, yo.

It's cancer

They tell Santa about the misfit toy island and Santa's like oh ho ho! I had no idea, absolutely no idea at all that sentient misfit toys were being shipped to an island. I'd never do that.

<.< . >.>

We'll uh, we'll get some of the less misfit ones some homes, howboutthat? Haha what would you say about being my new LEAD raindeer, eh champ!?

Oh, so work for the government?

Jack Johnson has an interesting version of Rudolf that's related here

I mean, yeah