One of the biggest fights I ever had with my mother began when I told her I was going into advertising. For a nice Jewish boy like me, a career in advertising represented a parenting failure of Biblical proportions. She would have been happier if I started selling used cars.

I wish she could have met another ad man, Robert L. May, a nice Jewish boy from New Rochelle, New York.

Thanks to May, millions of people have shared one more smile, one more warm moment, and one more feeling of hope at Christmas time.

But because May was an ad man, they almost didn’t.

By 1938, the Great Depression had sunk its fangs deep into the American economy. Despite it’s reputation as a retailing powerhouse, Montgomery Ward suffered a particularly disappointing year and Sewell Avery, Ward’s president, vowed it would not happen again.

At the start of 1939, Avery’s turnaround strategy included a special Christmas giveaway—an exclusive coloring book that would lure children, and their parents, into his stores’ toy departments. May, then a Chicago-based Ward’s copywriter with a facility for limericks and song parodies, was tapped to create it.

Getting into the ho-ho-ho spirit while Valentine’s Day, spring flowers, and summer at the Lake Michigan shore ticked by would have been challenging enough. But May’s wife, Evelyn, was dying of cancer.

Caring for his wife, soothing his four-year-old daughter, and tending to his day-to-day copywriting chores was more than enough to occupy his long, waking hours. Yet May refused to give up the extra assignment. After his wife passed away, he said that he needed the job more than ever.

His persistence paid off when, in August, 1939, ad man Robert May unveiled the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

There are competing stories of how May created Rudolph, but Ronald D. Lankford, author of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer: An American Hero, credits the idea to May’s daughter, Barbara, and Hans Christian Anderson. Barbara was fascinated by the deer at the Lincoln Park Zoo. Anderson’s The Ugly Duckling was a tale May knew all too well, since he was bullied as a school kid.

And the red nose?

May wanted Rudolph to be an outsider and he hit upon the red-nose-as-beacon while watching the fog roll in across Lake Michigan.

Had May been an ordinary children’s author, his agent might have easily sold May’s manuscript to a publisher. But May was an ad man.

Nothing in advertising sees the light of day without going through “The Review.” I’ve been to my share of these review meetings. They’re like asking pre-schoolers to help you improve quantum theory. This one was no different.

According to Lankford, May’s meeting was populated with the requisite collection of marketing executives and the requisite collection of, as Lankford put it, “clerks, secretaries, and others.”

Rudolph nearly didn’t get off the ground. The attendees couldn’t get past his horrific red nose. Good heavens, it was the color of alcoholism. How scandalous for Montgomery Ward to subtly suggest that little nippers finish off their playtime with a little nip.

All you can do in “The Review” is hope for a miracle. May got his in the form of Ward’s display manager Carl Hacker. “I think that every line that Bob May wrote is beautiful—just perfect,” Lankford quoted Hacker as saying. “I think it would be a crime for any of us to change one word of it!”

The opposition fell apart like a soggy hamburger bun.

If May had been an author, his publisher might have printed tens of thousands of copies of his book. But May was an ad man and Rudolph was advertising. Money spent on Rudolph was an investment in future revenue.

Ward’s bet big.

It printed and gave away 2.4 MILLION copies of May’s story—not as a coloring book but as a 32-page, full-color comic book.

Over the years Rudolph has spawned books, toys, and television shows. He was the hero of a song (written by May’s brother-in-law) that turned Gene Autry into a megastar. None of this was foreseen when Rudolph reappeared in 1946, with the end of World War II.

Neither was May’s second Rudolph miracle.

In 1947 Avery, known as a hard-hearted man, gave May the copyright to Rudolph, free and clear. The money from licensing rights helped May climb out from under the debt he accumulated during his wife’s illness.

But does this belong in the miracle column?

When Avery ceded Rudolph to May, the executive wound up with the best of both worlds. Montgomery Ward would continue to feature Rudolph in its Christmas promotions while May absorbed the risk of maintaining Rudolph’s popularity and paid for the privilege out of his own pocket.

Miracle or shrewd business move, one thing is certain. May’s life made for an only-in-advertising story that would have changed my mother’s’ mind about the nobility of of my career choice. Even if I never could.

A tip of my Christmas cap to charter subscriber Mike Fast for suggesting this story.