Volume 32 Number 1 Article 9 10-15-2013 The Hobbit and The Father Christmas Letters Kris Swank Pima Community College-Northwest Campus in Tucson, AZ Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore Part of the Children's and Young Adult Literature Commons Recommended Citation Swank, Kris (2013) "The Hobbit and The Father Christmas Letters," Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: Vol. 32 : No. 1 , Article 9. Available at: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol32/iss1/9 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Mythopoeic Society at SWOSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature by an authorized editor of SWOSU Digital Commons. An ADA compliant document is available upon request. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To join the Mythopoeic Society go to: http://www.mythsoc.org/join.htm Mythcon 51: A VIRTUAL “HALFLING” MYTHCON July 31 - August 1, 2021 (Saturday and Sunday) http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-51.htm Mythcon 52: The Mythic, the Fantastic, and the Alien Albuquerque, New Mexico; July 29 - August 1, 2022 http://www.mythsoc.org/mythcon/mythcon-52.htm Abstract Traces the mutual influences of olkienT ’s The Hobbit and the letters he wrote to his children in the person of Father Christmas. Similar themes in Roverandom and The Book of Lost Tales are also discussed. She tracks the development of several motifs that appear throughout, like irascible wizards, playful elves, invented languages, impudent bears, and fireworks. Additional Keywords Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Bears; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Elves; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Characters—Wizards; Tolkien, J.R.R.—Languages—Arktik; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Book of Lost Tales; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Father Christmas Letters; Tolkien, J.R.R. The Hobbit—Sources; Tolkien, J.R.R. Roverandom This article is available in Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature: https://dc.swosu.edu/mythlore/vol32/iss1/9 T h e H o b b it a n d T h e F a t h e r C h r i s t m a s L e t t e r s K r is S w a n k An old man famous for fireworks. A last homely house in a desolate landscape. Elves. Goblins. Dragons. A gruff but affable bear. These are all familiar story elements from The Hobbit, the fantasy novel that earned J.R.R. Tolkien popular acclaim when it was first published in 1937. Before, during, and after his work on The Hobbit, Tolkien was also engaged in an annual holiday tradition of sending letters and pictures to his children in the guise of Father Christmas. These Father Christmas Letters also featured an old man with fireworks, a homely house, elves, goblins, dragons, and a gruff but affable bear. The worlds of Bilbo Baggins and Nicholas Christmas are very different, yet they have several striking similarities in character-types, settings and plotlines. Tolkien famously discussed how new stories are constructed from the bones of old legends, tales and history. He said "the Pot of Soup, the Cauldron of Story, has always been boiling, and to it have continually been added new bits" ("On Fairy-Stories" ["OFS"] 125). Several scholars have shown how Tolkien himself made liberal use of the great world Cauldron of Story to create his own, new tales.1 But in addition to the great Cauldron, Tolkien created his own Pot of Soup, recycling and recasting figures and devices from his personal legendarium into new and different stories. Elves and dragons, for instance, appear repeatedly in Tolkien's tales. The Hobbit recycles character- and place-names (such as Elrond and Gondolin) from the bones of Tolkien's older "Lost Tales," the stories and poems which would evolve into The Silmarillion. In their introduction to Tolkien's children's story, Roverandom, Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond remark that "As more of Tolkien's works have been published [...] since his death, it has become clear that nearly all of his writings are interrelated, if only in small ways, and that each sheds a welcome light upon the others" (xix). C om paring The Hobbit to early Christmas letters—those written prior to and during Tolkien's work on The Hobbit—interrelationships become apparent in at least three different ways: 1 Examples of Tolkien source criticism include Chance, Fimi, Fisher, Flieger, Rateliff, and Shippey, R oots an d B ranches. M yth lo re 32.1, Fall/Winter 2013 129 The Hobbit and The Father Christmas Letters 1. both the Father Christmas Letters and The Hobbit contain story elements which have common roots in Tolkien's early Lost Tales and poems; 2. some story elements in the Father Christmas Letters appear to have been borrowed from The Hobbit; and 3. a few story elements in The Hobbit appeared in the Father Christmas Letters first, suggesting that borrowing may have gone both ways. Like the master chef who uses similar ingredients to create two very different flavors of soup, a master storyteller can use the same character-types, settings, and plotlines to create different stories. Analyzing these three types of interrelationships between The Hobbit and the Father Christmas Letters m ay shed light—if only in small ways—on Tolkien's creative process, how he added to and drew from his legendarium, his own Cauldron of Story, to produce new tales. Father Christmas and the Letters Each winter from 1920-1943, envelopes bearing hand-drawn stamps from the "North Pole" arrived for Tolkien's children. Inside were letters and pictures he created in the guise of Father Nicholas Christmas or one of his companions. At first these were simple greetings, but over the years Tolkien added colorful characters and exciting stories. The family preserved these artifacts and, after Tolkien's death, published them as the Father Christmas Letters in 1976. The collection has been revised and republished several times with the latest edition, Letters from Father Christmas, in September 2012.2 Father Christmas was, of course, already a familiar figure in England's Cauldron of Story, the personification of the Christmas spirit in the British Isles. "Some have pointed to a pagan origin (a perceived resemblance to Saturn, Neptune and Odin), but the term comes into use only in the 15th century" in Christmas carols (Bowler). As a figure of drink and revelry, his popularity suffered somewhat under the Puritans, but the Victorian revival of the holiday revitalized interest in Father Christmas. Perhaps his most famous depiction during this period is John Leech's 1843 illustration "The Second of the Two Spirits" for Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, "where the gigantic Ghost of Christmas Present, sitting among piled-up food and drink, wears exactly the kind of fur-trimmed loose gown of the modern Father Christmas—except that it is green, matching his holly wreath" (Simpson and Roud 120). Towards the end of the 1870s, Father Christmas became conflated with the European St. Nicholas and the American Santa Claus. Like those other figures, he came down chimneys 2 Christina Scull presents an excellent comparison of the contents and quality of the reproductions in the various editions through the 2009 HarperCollins trade paperback (Scull, "The 'Father Christmas' Letters," 2010), and an analysis of the 2012 edition (Scull "The 'Father Christmas' Letters," 2012). 130 Mythlore 123, Fall/Winter 2013 Kris Swank and put toys in stockings. More and more often he was depicted in a red costume (rather than green), and the holly crown was replaced with a hood (Simpson and Roud 120). It is this later image that Tolkien adopted for the letters he wrote to his children as Father Christmas. The creation of T h e H o b b it was intricately linked to the Father Christmas L e tte r s . In The History of the Hobbit, John Rateliff argues that Tolkien wrote major portions of T h e H o b b it over his Christmas holidays from Oxford in the early 1930s. During those same weeks he was creating his annual Christmas letters and illustrations for his children. "The presence of the Cave-Bear, Elves, and a magician at the battle with the goblins [in the 1932 Christmas letter] argues that the final chapters [of T h e H o b b it] were in progress at the time this letter was written" (Rateliff xvi). An early draft of T h e H o b b it contains two mentions of Christmas. First, Tolkien's original introduction of Elrond described him being "as kind as Christmas" (Rateliff 115), though this was changed in the published version to "as kind as summer" (T h e H o b b it [H] III.49). Second, w hen Bilbo, Gandalf and the dwarves escape from wolves by climbing trees, Tolkien wrote that "Fili & Kili were right up a slender larch like a tall thin Christmas tree" (Rateliff 203). In his 1987 Preface to T h e H o b b it, Christopher Tolkien recalled, "In December 1937, two months after publication, I wrote to Father Christmas and gave T h e H o b b it a vigorous puff, asking him if he knew of it, and proposing it to him as an idea for Christmas presents" (H vi). Father Christmas soon responded, "I was going to send 'Hobbits'—I am sending away loads (mostly second editions) which I sent for only a few days ago" (Letters from Father Christmas [FCL] 84).