Letters from Father Christmas

Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien; edited by Baillie Tolkien, 2004 (Originally published as Father Christmas Letters, 1976)

Reviewed by Mike Foster

Its twenty-four affectionate and amusing letters, penned in colored ink and pencils, begin in 1920 to three-year-old eldest son John during Tolkien’s tenure at the University of Leeds. The last, a poignant valedictory to daughter Priscilla depicting a bright earth floating in dark but starry space, comes at the bitter end of 1943, when sons Christopher, nineteen, and Michael, twenty-three, were off in World War II, which had a severe and long-lasting effect on that second son.

First assembled and published in 1976 as The Father Christmas Letters and revised and enlarged to 159 pages in 1999, this edition, a 2004 paperback with a grand red and gilt embossed cover, likewise includes extracts and pictures not in the original.

Amid the wit and laughter are undertones of worry and loss. Yet Tolkien’s emerging legendarium and linguisticum begin to shine through, trailing clouds of Northern-lights glory.

It grows with each tale. The North Polar Bear (or NPB, as he is called; devotees of Tolkien’s good friend C.S. Lewis will fish the allusion) emerges as a comic foil and clumsy correspondent. Snow-elves, Red Gnomes, Snow-men, Cave-bears, NPB nephews Paksu (“Fat”) and Valkotukka (“Whitehair”) swell the progress.

In 1936, Elven secretary Ilbereth enters to make it a trinity of writers. The Elves loom large in the defense of Father Christmas’ home and storage cellars against Goblin attacks. Like The Lord of the Rings’ elves, NPB senses Goblins by scent. Father Christmas’ mighty horn Windbeam pre-echoes the horns of Rohan and Buckland.

Wordplay of laughworthy prodigality abounds. Ilbereth is “thinuous” as opposed to fatuous. The roly-poly North Polar Bear calls Priscilla’s stuffed bear Bingo “His Poliness.” Like the pyrotechnical Gandalf, NPB loves setting off the “Rory Bory Aylis” fireworks.

The prototype of the illustration Tolkien would adapt for The Hobbit’s dust-jacket is previewed in 1931-32’s drawing. In 1937, only Christopher and Priscilla received letters; from 1938 to 1943, only Tolkien’s daughter got one. 1938’s is a long poem in rhyming couplets (if you allow “Priscilla” and “pillow”).

Even at Christmas, the darkling clouds outside loom. Scholar Douglas A. Anderson writes that “Tolkien was constantly delayed by illnesses, and by worry about the illnesses of his wife [and children].”

John D. Rateliff adds:

“I don't know what role weather or illness might have played, but finances certainly did -- but not world economy so much as Tolkien family funds. Note that the letters are full of creative excuses why the children are not getting the (expensive) toys they asked for -- North Polar Bear fell down the stairs on them, or the goblins stole all the trains, or NPB switched all the labels about. Once you notice it, it becomes quite a trend.”

Family moves and household guests reflect real-world events in 1926 and 1927. The lamentation from 1940 on is “this horrible war is reducing all our stocks.”

To thirteen-year-old Priscilla, Father Nicholas Christmas writes:

“I suppose you will be hanging up your stocking just once more: I hope so for I have still a few little things for you. After this I shall have to say “goodbye”, more or less: I mean, I shall not forget you. We always keep the old numbers of our old friends, and their letters; and later on we hope to come back when they are grown up and have houses of their own and children.” (110)

Good writing grows out of passion; great writing grows from love, the purest passion. Charity, loyalty, faith, kindness, purity--the qualities that made Tolkien’s heroes, from Aragorn to his archetype, the Pearl-poet’s Sir Gawain such true heroes—illuminate these letters, comical and childlike as they are.

And a poignant pang comes through, too. Orphaned of his father at age four, and his mother in 1904, when he was twelve, Tolkien grew up without Christmases with a father and mother. His wife, Edith Bratt, was illegitimate, which he discovered when they married in 1916 before he went off to the Great War. The love that shines all through his two dozen calligraphic and whimsical letters to their four children is as brilliant as the star of Bethlehem, and as holy.

In her last letter to Father Christmas in 1943, Priscilla Tolkien requested a stuffed toy bear. That selfsame request came this year from my three-year-old only grand-daughter Madeleine Grace Campbell in her crayon-scrawled letter to Santa Claus.

We can’t be sure, but we think that he will drop it down her chimney in Georgia, on Dec. 25.

But we do know that Father Christmas left her this lovely book of letters, inscribed in his shaky script, on Dec. 11, her last night here at Foster Farm in Metamora. And he will never forget her, her parents, or us.

As G.K. Chesterton wrote one hundred years ago: “Father Christmas was with us when the fairies departed; and please God he will still be with us when the gods return.”

Thanks for viewing our review of Letters from Father Christmas by JRR Tolkien. Click here to return to the Tolkien Online home page.