Letters from Father Christmas, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Baillie Tolkien, ed.)

Jane of Reading, Writing, Working, Playing included this book in her Spirit of Christmas reading challenge, and as soon as I read her post about it, I headed off to find a copy. I figured it would be the perfect Christmas present to myself - and I was right.

Beginning in 1920, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote these letters for his children. The last letter included here was written in 1943, when his daughter Priscilla was aged 14. Father Christmas told her that year,

"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."

The first letters, to Tolkien's oldest son John, are fairly brief. As the years go on, they become more elaborate, with a cast of characters including the Polar Bear, who helps Father Christmas organize his work, when he isn't getting into trouble with his nephews Paksu and Valkotukka; and the Snow Man, the gardener, with his children the Snowboys. (The North Pole is a very masculine place.) Later on we meet the Cave Bear, whose tunnels have been infested with goblins, and the Red Elves who come to work for Father Christmas. There are some familiar Tolkien touches, particularly the elf Ilbereth, who becomes FC's secretary, and who writes in a beautiful flowing elvish hand. Polar Bear, wandering around lost in the goblin caves, became "quite long and thin with hunger...He said, 'I should soon have been able to squeeze through a goblin-crack'" - which sounds very Bagginsish to me. Under siege by goblin hordes, Father Christmas has to sound "the great Horn (Windbeam)," which calls "snowboys, polar bears, and hundreds and hundreds of elves" to help defeat the goblins.  And it made me laugh when Father Christmas told Priscilla and her brother Christopher in the 1937 letter, "I was going to send 'Hobbits' - I am sending away loads (mostly second editions) which I sent for only a few days ago) - but I thought you would have lots..." I had forgotten The Hobbit was published that year.

There are serious touches to the letters as well. In the 1932 letter, Father Christmas reminds the children "there are far too many people in your land, and others, who are hungry and cold this winter." The letters from 1939 on mention "this horrible war" and the suffering it brings. But he tells Priscilla in the last letter, in 1943, "I am still very much alive, and shall come back again soon, as merry as ever."

The letters are charming, but the illustrations are amazing. The time it must have taken Tolkien to devise the letters, write them in two or three different handwritings, and then illustrate them! I love the picture of Father Christmas on the cover of my edition:

I know this is a book I will want to read again next Christmas. In the meantime, I'd like to learn more about Tolkien and his family, if anyone can recommend a good biography.

There and Back Again

The Hobbit, J.R.R. Tolkien

It's been a long time since I've read any Tolkien.  But I've had The Hobbit on my mind ever since the first of the films came out.  I have no interest in seeing it, though Martin Freeman is one of my favorite actors, but I've been curious about how it could be stretched over three films.  And then Anbolyn mentioned that she was planning to read it soon. The third crow for me was a book I didn't get on with at all, about the Roman Catholic elements in Tolkien's work. Although I didn't finish it, it brought his stories vividly to mind, particularly The Hobbit.

As far as I can remember, I first came across Tolkien on the bookshelves of my cousins.  My aunt said I was welcome to borrow The Hobbit and all three volumes of The Lord of the Rings.  It was years before I appreciated how generous my cousins were in letting them go without a word, or felt any shame over the fact that I not only took them but never gave them back!  (Larry and Chris, if you ever read this, I can bring them next time I come to Portland!)

Whew - confession of book burglary over.  Which is very appropriate, of course, in discussing a book about a burglar.  It was such fun meeting Bilbo Baggins again, and Gandalf, who seem like old friends.  That first chapter is wonderful, with Bilbo so settled into his comfortable life, only to be upset first by Gandalf's conversation and then by the overlapping arrivals of so many dwarfs for that most unexpected party.  But from that very first chapter, he rises to the occasion, nudged by that Tookish streak in him, which sets him off on his adventures with the wizard and the Twelve Dwarfs.  It was lovely to watch him grow from that rather comic figure, sunning himself complacently on his front steps, into the hero of their quest, while still remaining true to his own hobbit self - and not without some grumbling here and there, and some definitely unheroic moments.  It was also lovely to see Gandalf in a more light-hearted adventure, not yet burdened with the cares and responsibilities of the Fellowship.

It was a bit slow going at first, because so much reminded me of the later books, and I kept pulling The Fellowship of the Ring off the shelf to read different parts, like Frodo and Company's encounter with the trolls, or their arrival at Rivendell. (And then I went around for days with "Gil-galad was an Elven king..." running through my head). I had also confused some parts of this book with the later stories, like expecting Shelob to show up in Mirkwood.  Then there was much that I had forgotten, like the bearish Beorn, to whom Gandalf introduces his companions so adroitly.  And while I remembered that Bilbo bravely ventured into Smaug's lair, I had forgotten he went more than once, and the adventures he had there. (I have to say, Benedict Cumberbatch as the voice of Smaug almost tempts me to see the third film after all.)  Nor did I remember the Arkenstone and the crucial part it plays in the story.

Reading this reminded me of how much I love Tolkien's books, and hobbits in particular.  I think I'll be setting off again with the Fellowship of the Ring before too long.