This sets the Goblins back many years, but they spend that time rallying their forces. They crop up the next year, however, and the North Polar Bear in single combat takes down one hundred of them before the Gnomes arrive to handle the rest. In 1928 he fell down the stairs and in 1936 he fell asleep in the bath, flooding one of the gift sorting rooms. In 1925, he climbed the North Pole to retrieve Father Christmas's hood, and the North Pole broke, destroying Father Christmas's house in the process. Eventually his elfin secretary Ilbereth took over some of the writing duties in 1936.īut what did Father Christmas write about? Well his boon companion was the North Polar Bear, who had a way of getting himself into trouble. The letters were delivered to the house in envelopes bearing North Pole stamps and postal cancellations, except when they were marked 'By Elf Messenger' or 'by direct Reindeer Post.' Father Christmas's handwriting was often shaky-he was 'nineteen hundred and twenty-four, no! seven! years old on Christmas Day' 1923, and it was cold at the North Pole. Starting when John was three in 1920 and continuing for the next twenty-four years, Tolkien wrote and illustrated a personal letter from Father Christmas to his children each year.

Tolkien had four children-John, Michael, Christopher, and Priscilla. What kind of cool bedtime stories would he tell? What would he say when you asked him if Santa Claus was real?

Now imagine if the guy who did all that was your dad. And since the books' release in the 1950s, billions of dollars in revenue from books, films, and merchandise have proven that almost everyone loves it. Tolkien, a professor at Oxford, spent much of his life chronicling Middle-Earth's history, creating whole new languages and alphabets, complicated mythology, and international politics. His Lord of the Rings defined high fantasy: an intricately detailed fictional world (Middle-Earth) and a heroic epic quest (Frodo's imperative to destroy the one ring). Tolkien, in case you somehow have missed this, is the most important fantasy writer of all time. WITH THE HOBBIT COMING OUT IN THEATERS and Christmas only two weeks away, the time is right to bring out J.R.R.

The father christmas letters