"All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered."

J.R.R. Tolkien’s Winter Tale: A Letter from Father Christmas

You are familiar, no doubt, with the awkwardly sweet pieces of fiction that are his Father Christmas Letters. They were handwritten and illustrated between 1920 and 1943, and told the many adventures of Father Christmas in the North Pole, alongside his trusted assistant the Polar Bear.

It’s hard to pick one, as lots of them are really delightful, but my favourite has to be the 1933 letter when the goblin attack the workshop and they’re fended off by the Polar Bear and the rest of the elves. The one from 1932 is a good one too, featuring an episode similar to the one in the Wind in the Willows where Mole goes down with Badger to his ancestor’s catacombs: here Father Christmas and the Polar Bear find some ancient caves beneath the North Pole and they’re able to decipher some parts of the goblin’s alphabet.

 

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