Fantasy: For Children and Adults

Abstract

Tolkien enjoyed numerous activities and pastimes outside his research and fiction. For example, John and Priscilla Tolkien have described in The Tolkien Family Album how their father wrote and illustrated letters from Father Christmas to his own children several weeks before Christmas. On Christmas morning, during the ceremony with the typically English Christmas stockings, there was always a letter from Father Christmas himself, with a North Pole stamp, designed by Tolkien. The children had always the opportunity of writing back to Father Christmas by placing a letter in the open fireplace, where the letters suddenly disappeared in an unguarded moment. Sooty footprints around the fireplace also helped to make the situation credible. Sometimes Tolkien also persuaded the postman to deliver the letter from Father Christmas.