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It's The North Polar Bear's Fault- A Fandom Apprentice Christmas Special
28 Plays6 months ago
It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year (apparently), and we're celebrating with a special family-friendly (for once) episode! This week we cover the Professor's "Letters from Father Christmas," aka "The Father Christmas Letters" (more on this in the episode)! Join us for a cozy holiday read through some Tolkien family lore!
P.S.- The North Polar Bear did nothing wrong.
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Transcript
Podcast Break Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello everyone! Rin here with a quick update about our production schedule. We are taking a break for the rest of December and the first week of January to spend some time with our families, but we will be back with a brand new episode on January 7th, covering the beginning of the final book of the Lord of the Rings saga. So come join us as we actually get started with the last phase of our journey through this series.
00:00:27
Speaker
Thanks so much for listening, and we hope that if you're celebrating a holiday this winter, your home is filled with joy and light. And now,
Christmas Special Introduction
00:00:34
Speaker
on to the Christmas special of The Phantom Apprentice. Back to Christmas music for a moment. My my like my Christmas music albums are like Vince Garaldi's Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack. Sammy Ray and the Friends Last Christmas, because that's a banger.
00:00:53
Speaker
and Bruce Springsteen's Santa Claus is coming to town. Oh, I don't think I've listened to that one, but that's going to be in the rotation. It's it's pretty fucking solid. Oh, it where I was just thinking, I was like, oh, my God, did I accidentally say the F word just now? We here
Maintaining Family-Friendly Content
00:01:16
Speaker
at The Fandom Apprentice are trying for once to make a family friendly Christmas special.
00:01:24
Speaker
We will do our best if you notice pauses that are slightly longer than our typical long pauses, which I do edit down by the way. That is the gears in our brains turning to this single brain cell trying to think of something to fill space that is not a curse word and because- Or not ah not an innuendo. Yeah. This is wholesome, family-friendly, Father Christmas content if it kills us.
00:01:54
Speaker
daddy christmas
00:02:02
Speaker
There will still be some challenging ideas, but they will be existential challenges that we all can face together.
00:02:17
Speaker
My one other Christmas music bit is in the last couple of years, I've sort of embraced like the solstice as the season. Yeah. For me. And, you know, I've had solstice dinners with friends and because like my family all still celebrates Christmas and I i want to be a part of that with them. But I every year that passes where Christmas creeps earlier and earlier into the year.
00:02:44
Speaker
and you know feels like it becomes more capitalist and less of a winter festival. just And also ah we know that I'm not big on the whole Jesus thing. Yeah, fair. so like But I have a whole playlist of songs where the requirement is it is it has to be wintery, has to be about winter or the solstice.
00:03:13
Speaker
and it cannot mention Christmas, Santa or Jesus in any way. and um So I have a whole like essentially pagan solstice playlist. I love that. And I have listened to this playlist and it is a delight. Maybe I'll maybe i'll share that on our socials. Yeah, that would be fun.
00:03:36
Speaker
I enjoy that I think that every former Christian kid has a couple of church songs that secretly we don't want to admit are still bangers, but kind of are. I'll occasionally listen to a churchy Christmas song, but mostly that is no longer relevant to my enjoyment of the season. I live in a Jewish household, so we don't really do a whole lot of Christmas here. But I do have a giant monstera that reaches the top of my ceiling. The leaves are bent because they are too tall for my home. So I don't know how tall it is, but it's huge. And so I will decorate that with Christmas lights and put ornaments on it.
00:04:21
Speaker
But this is a very chill space. This is not the fandom apprentice suddenly doing a hard pivot and proselytizing. We are just enjoying, we're enjoying Christmas time. For me, it's Joy to the World and the Hallelujah Chorus.
00:04:38
Speaker
It's good. Listen, Hondel. Hondel's Messiah, man. Because so much of Western music for hundreds of years has been in some way connected to the church. You got to pick your battles. Yeah. And and i am I am a musician, so I've listened to a lot of a lot of it. But speaking of connected to the church,
00:05:06
Speaker
You know who was deeply connected to the church throughout his whole life? I haven't the foggiest idea who you could possibly mean, Catherine. Certainly not the same man who wrote Lord of the Rings. Yes,
Tolkien's Letters from Father Christmas
00:05:22
Speaker
so ah Professor John Ronald Wilken Tolkien. His Christian name. Yes, exactly.
00:05:43
Speaker
Ho, ho, ho everyone
00:05:50
Speaker
And welcome back to the Christmas special episode of The Phantom Apprentice, because everyone has to have one, I guess. But also for us, it's particularly relevant because our favorite author's favorite author um wrote a whole book of letters from Father Christmas. um Let's back up. Want to introduce ourselves?
00:06:20
Speaker
Hi, I'm Rin. I'm one of the hosts of The Fandom Apprentice. Ordinarily, I'm the one who has read Lord of the Rings before, and in that capacity is serving as the quote-unquote knowledgeable one on the podcast.
00:06:37
Speaker
I'm Sam. I'm the other one. I am the supposed apprentice. This is a fun one because although I am obviously not tapped into the broader Tolkien fandom very much, I just have a feeling that Letters from Father Christmas is something that most people wouldn't necessarily know exists. So this is a really fun little super niche piece of Tolkien writing.
00:07:05
Speaker
When I was clearing out my childhood bedroom at my parents' house when they were getting ready to move, I spotted this on my shelf. And first off, I actually have a different edition than the one you were reading at first. Yeah, and thankfully we found that out when we were comparing notes. Otherwise, you would have missed out on so much. Yeah, so originally, the Father Christmas letters were abridged and presented in an edited form until the 1990s, from the 1970s through the 1990s, when they were published in their complete form as Letters from Father Christmas. The Father Christmas letters, or the Letters from Father Christmas, were written over the course of 23 years by
00:08:02
Speaker
Professor J.R.R. Tolkien, to his four children, starting when his oldest son John was three, and continuing up through when his youngest child Priscilla was 14, from 1920 to 1943. And because it's Tolkien,
00:08:22
Speaker
It does have an increasingly complex, consistent internal narrative between all of these letters, but also you see his kids grow up. And we'll talk about this more sort of as we go on, going from just dear John to dear boys, dear boys and girls who eventually just to Priscilla because the boys are too old for Father Christmas.
00:08:48
Speaker
very emotional, very beautiful. And I am curious about why it was originally abridged. I don't know if there's any information on the reasoning behind that, but I don't know if it was because these were just personal letters so they didn't have them all in one place or if the family just didn't want to share all of that private aspect of their life with their dad. I don't know. But they're really just intimate and beautiful labors of love from a dad to his kids. And they were really nice to read.
00:09:24
Speaker
Yeah, and you can you can very much tell that this was something that Tolkien enjoyed doing. And you can see occasionally, like, clearly he was stressed out certain years and like barely had time to do this, but he clearly still wanted to, because every letter, even if it's only a few lines, is written with love.
00:09:45
Speaker
h And there will always be an internally consistent reason for why the letter is short that year, or why there is no picture like, oh, the polar bear spilled all my ink this year, or we were fending off a goblin attack. And so I had to write this letter very quickly, but I love you very much and I'm bringing you presents. And it's just, it's lovely. in but particular In particular, like almost all of these letters have hand-drawn illustrations by the professor.
00:10:17
Speaker
Yes. So I think maybe we just go over like the format of like what to expect in a Father Christmas letter. So there's the envelope and in at least the edition I had, I don't know about yours, there were full color pictures of the envelope, the letters, the images, the paintings.
00:10:34
Speaker
And so there will be an envelope that will say, you know, address to whichever relevant children, a little hand painted stamp of some kind of North Pole imagery and a little hand drawn, you know, whatever the stamp is that they put over the stamp to show that it's been mailed. And maybe a little note from Father Christmas or the polar bear saying, urgent, deliver it once or whatever. And then you have the actual letter, which will be in handwriting specific to whatever character is writing that letter or parts of it. And then usually there's also a beautiful full color illustration of something that happened in the letter. Yeah, it's, it's gorgeous. And and a lot of the illustrations have little annotations on them.
00:11:23
Speaker
Sometimes the envelopes say like, by direct reindeer post, by gnome post, urgent for immediate delivery. Um, it's so cute. In the introduction, it says that Tolkien arranged to have the letters delivered all kinds of different ways. So sometimes the mail carrier would deliver them or sometimes they just appear on the mantle or some other whimsical thing would happen. So it was a whole.
00:11:51
Speaker
process of discovery. And I would love to read the very first one because it's really short. It's yeah just a couple sentences. And just to anchor ourselves in where we're starting when John is three to then the elaborate plot events that will spin out. But this is the first one. It has the picture of Father Christmas that is on the cover of a lot of editions of the book.
00:12:18
Speaker
It's from 1920. Dear John, I heard you ask daddy what I was like and where I lived. I have drawn me and my house for you. Take care of the picture. I am just now off for Oxford with my bundle of toys. Some for you. Hope I shall arrive in time. The snow is very thick at the North Pole tonight. You're loving father Christmas. So that in and of itself is delightful and beautiful and wonderful and magical, but that's just where we're starting.
00:12:45
Speaker
There's also a little annotation at the top, love to Daddy, Mummy, Michael, and Auntie Mary as well. In in my edition, that letter is included in the introduction, and then there's another snippet from one ah from a few years later, and I don't remember, because I did end up reading the full edition, but I don't remember what year this one was specifically from, but it talks about his reindeer.
00:13:13
Speaker
And I want to, before we really jump in, I want to have a brief aside about reindeer because they are one of my favorite animals. I don't know if we've talked about reindeer on the podcast. I don't think we have. ah So for the listeners, we have talked to before about how I lived in Denmark for some time. But a piece of that is I was studying Arctic biology.
00:13:35
Speaker
in Arctic ecology. And so as part of that, I traveled up to northern Norway and had the incredible experience of visiting with a family of Sami people who still traditionally heard reindeer follow their traditional life ways of herding the reindeer and traveling nomadically from season to season. And we were able to feed the reindeer and we learned from the family about how how they support themselves with the reindeer and how the reindeer sort of factor into all of their traditional life ways. And i I adore reindeer.
00:14:19
Speaker
in the Americas, we also call them caribou. Most people are most familiar with them from pulling Santa's sleigh. And I wanted to note here in the letter, Tolkien says or Father Christmas says,
00:14:37
Speaker
I've included an illustration of me and my reindeer. I don't have 12 pair of deer, as you will see in some books. I usually use 7 pair. 14 is such a nice number, to which I immediately went, to Professor.
00:14:52
Speaker
Gosh darn it, professor. Because if you look at the final total of adventures traveling off to the Lonely Mountain in The Hobbit, there's several pieces about how 13 dwarves was unlucky, so they had to find a lucky number 14 in the Berkeley. Oh my God, you're right. I feel silly for not catching that, yes. But I went 14 reindeer?
00:15:18
Speaker
that's That's a lot of reindeer, because you know we're all used to Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen, right? Who originated in the 1823 poem, A Visit from St. Nicholas, more commonly known as The Night Before Christmas by Clement Clark Moore. There also was 10 reindeer named in L. Frank Baum's 1902, The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Ooh, I didn't know that. Who have different names from Dasher and Dancer, et cetera, et cetera.
00:15:48
Speaker
The one that Tolkien would not have been familiar with, who is a staple of Santa Claus and Father Christmas lore in the US these days, is Rudolph. Because Rudolph was not introduced until the 1939 book, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer by Robert L. May.
00:16:08
Speaker
Was he invented for capitalism? I feel like I remember learning that somewhere, was it? I'm sure he was. but So Tolkien could not have been aware of Rudolf and incorporated Rudolf into any of his stories, as you might expect from like a Santa Claus or a Father Christmas story, until almost the last four years of him writing these letters.
00:16:32
Speaker
<unk>t Which, and obviously at that point he didn't incorporate that. He didn't incorporate any reindeer by the names that are mentioned in those other poems. From a biological sense, I really love reindeer because they're a physiologically variable, uh, circumpolar species who their various physiological adaptations are, are very highly specialized to their sort of micro environments, which is very cool.
00:17:01
Speaker
Hit us with a couple examples. Just, just one or two, just for the people. So for example, uh, Svalbard reindeer. We're super, super, super tiny.
00:17:13
Speaker
right They're the smallest subspecies of reindeer. They have sort of broader noses. They also have an elongated gut compared to other reindeer and and all reindeer are ruminants. So they all have a really long gut anyway, which allows them to extract nutrients, more nutrients from nutrient poor vegetation. But Svalbard reindeer living so far north in such a cold and inhospitable environment
Reindeer Adaptations to Cold
00:17:39
Speaker
need to be able to extract that extra nutrition.
00:17:43
Speaker
They're also small, so they don't have to expend a lot of energy. They're shorter. So like their their legs, the ratio of like their legs to their body height is shorter than other reindeer because ah those sort of thinner body parts are where they are where those animals lose a lot of heat. And so to maintain body temperature, they have shorter extremities.
00:18:08
Speaker
Their antlers are not quite as wildly impressive as we see in other subspecies. Reindeer as a whole don't have circadian rhythms. I know you've told me that before, but it's still wild. But it makes sense though, because there's the amount of light that you get up at the oh but the North Pole. I'm going to do my censorship. The sound is going to be jingle bells at the North Pole. That's actually spectacular. Thank you. I'm a good editor.
00:18:38
Speaker
It's not consistent throughout the year, so that wouldn't make sense for them. Right. There's the there's the polar summer and and the and polar night in which you know you have 24 hours of sunlight for months at a time or 24 hours of darkness for months at a time. And so reindeer tends to forage in sort of six-hour sleep-wake cycles.
00:19:06
Speaker
rather than have this standard mammalian circadian rhythm. There are other arctic species that also display this, Siberian hamsters. all For example, also display this adaptation, which is very fun. Yeah, but I absolutely adore reindeer. They're soft, they make funky noises.
00:19:29
Speaker
At least the semi-domesticated ones that I got to personally interact with You know, they're, they're still a prank species. So they will still, they are still very nervous of new people. But if you like go out and stand in the middle of the field for like 15, 20 minutes with a bucket full of reindeer moss, they will eventually come over to you who and you can hand feed them and they get very snuffily up in your, up in your face and you run out of moss and they start pawing at you like, I want more. Where's, where's more moss, please. Give me the moss. We have such soft noses.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, I have not one, but two beautiful photos that you took from that time. One I am looking at right now. It's on my bar cart framed in this beautiful canvas and another one that's upstairs on the stairs that are just lovely shots of reindeer. I love the one that you have on your bar cart, because I it's. We were right by a fjord and there was an oil derrick that was being repaired out in the fjord. And so and Norway in the modern era has become very wealthy off of oil production and exportation exporting. And so I thought it was a really interesting juxtaposition between old and new Norway. We could post that picture too. If you want, you own it. You get to decide what to do with it. We could. Yeah, I can do that. But that's really all I have for reindeer. just I really love reindeer. I think they're adorable.
00:21:04
Speaker
I could probably do an entire podcast episode just talking about reindeer, and but we we won't because that's that's too much. I will listen to you talk about reindeer anytime.
00:21:18
Speaker
But in terms of the Father Christmas letters, which you thought you were here for Father Christmas letters, really, you're here for reindeer. They don't really feature very prominently at all. another No, they don't. Notable absence is a Mrs. Claus. I did not see a single reference to a Mrs. Claus, although Santa Claus and the polar bear do seem quite close. But interestingly, he's never referred to as Santa Claus. Well, yeah, he's always Father Christmas, but he's he's Nicholas Christmas. Yes. Yes.
00:21:49
Speaker
I'm sure there are distinctions, but it's Santa, it's the same guy. Because there are so many of these letters. I mean, they span 20 years and some years have multiple letters. If you could tell the kids were really enthusiastic about writing to Santa this year, I think also their parents encouraged them to write to Santa, like many parents do. So if they were a little bit overzealous with the letters, there would be one around the end of November, and then another one actually closer to Christmas to sort of satisfy their appetite for Father Christmas. But there's a lot, so we're not going to summarize every single one. But I figure if we have highlights, favorite ones, good quotes to sort of go through and perhaps encourage the people to read this themselves, because it is a delightful, cozy little Christmas read. After that 1920 letter, the next one doesn't show up until 1923.
00:22:44
Speaker
isn' Which makes total sense to me, right? Because at that point, John would have been six. And in the intervening years, right, John's four and five, Michael was born in November of 1920.
00:23:02
Speaker
um So when that first letter was written, Michael was a newborn. Yeah. And so I'm sure with two kids under five, the professor and Edith were very busy.
00:23:14
Speaker
Yeah. um But in 1923 with Michael sort of firmly a toddler and John now at six and no more kids until 1924 with Christopher, it sort of made sense to bring it back a little bit. Yeah. And at first they each get their own letters. Eventually they start getting joint letters addressed to the boys. Mm-hmm.
00:23:38
Speaker
And in 1925, I think, is when we're first introduced to the character of the polar bear. Yes. Who is referred to within the first couple of letters specifically as the North polar bear. like Yes, the North polar bear, excuse me. Always the North polar bear. Capital T, capital N, capital P, the North.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yes, until eventually he he'd just becomes the polar bear. Or PB. Or PB, who does have a ah separate name, but we'll get to that. The polar
Father Christmas's Polar Bear Helper
00:24:14
Speaker
bear is Father Christmas's erstwhile helper, and also the one of the biggest sources of trouble at the North Pole.
00:24:27
Speaker
ah Or at least Father Christmas blames him for most of the trouble at the North Pole. We do get a lot of the North Polar Bears perspective. He will write his own letters. He will interject in letters. Sometimes the letters will take a format of a dialogue between Father Christmas and the North Polar Bear as if they're wrestling over the pen trying to include their own two cents. But For better or for worse, the North Polar Bear is blamed for most of the bad things that happen. In the first one where he appears, there is a literal pole, the North Pole, and Santa's hat gets stuck on top of it. And PB, helpfully, tries to go and get it, but in the process snaps the pole in half and
00:25:16
Speaker
breaks it and crashes through the roof of Santa's house. And then he has to build a new house. And it's all very catastrophic, but still comical. And also in that one, PB includes a drawing of himself labeled me, which I just thought was very cute. Which is very cute.
00:25:38
Speaker
the other The other sort of big issue in the first couple of years that PB is responsible for is setting off all of the fireworks that are responsible for the Aurora Borealis, which in the text is written as Rory Borealis, R-O-R-Y new word, B-O-R-Y new word, A-Y-L-I-S.
00:26:03
Speaker
And sort of it gets described as, you know, that's why the Aurora were so spectacular. It was, it all happened this year. And I, so I went to look up and see if the Aurora were particularly strong in 1926. So I was like, why would this be included? Um, and I couldn't find like concrete answers, but in 1925 and 1926, there were a lot of worldwide mentions.
00:26:27
Speaker
of Aurora in various newspapers from further south than you'd typically expect to see Aurora. Ooh, very nice. Residents of Salzburg, Austria saw the Aurora and thought it was fire in the night and so called the fire brigade to put out the fires.
00:26:44
Speaker
But it was just the Aurora. It disrupted telegraph ah networks between New York and London. Chicago mentions Aurora. And there was also an article in the LA Times, which is really far south, but I don't know if they got that far south or if it was just an article about it. Yeah. So that that was really interesting to me of maybe, you know, this was an explanation by the professor of events that happened during the year. And we start kind of seeing this a couple of times as I feel like there's little references. We can pick out little pieces of the kids' lives or of the world from the letters, which is just fun.
00:27:30
Speaker
One of the things that I, as somebody who takes care of small children, noticed immediately is that often the polar bear setting off fireworks will be a reason that the kids aren't getting any for Christmas because I'll PB set off all the fireworks, so I didn't have any left to send you. I'm so sorry, that clumsy bear, which for me as an adult is a good way to saying, uh, yeah, Edith, there's no way we're getting these kids fireworks. Absolutely not. I know that times were different and it was maybe more acceptable. There is a reference to characters playing snapdragons at one point, which is
00:28:06
Speaker
something about trying to pinch fire with your hands. There was all kinds of stupid, dangerous games that children's played in the early 20th century. But still, I see the clear correlation between PB's antics, which also escalate naturally to exploding the moon and making the man in the moon fall out of the moon and crash down to the North Pole. I think I missed that bit. Oh, my God. Yeah, no, that's in 1926.
00:28:37
Speaker
PV sets off a giant firework that explodes the moon, and then the man in the moon falls down and eats rather a lot of Father christmass Christmas' Christmas chocolate. And the man in the moon does come back later on, but yeah, he just casually blew up the moon. The other thing that both the fireworks and the relationship between Father Christmas and Polar Bear it reminded me of is Gandalf.
00:29:05
Speaker
Yeah. Father Christmas reminds me very strongly of sort of a kindlier Gandalf and the polar bear is reminding me of Pippin a little bit. Yeah. Oh my God. You're so right. This character that is clearly causing the old wizard a massive headache is the reason the old wizard has gone through his entire bottle of Excedrin in about 10 minutes. But at the same time still like clearly loves this troublesome character, right? And cares about them and wants to see them okay.
00:29:45
Speaker
yeah So that was that was the lens that immediately popped up for me. I love that, you're right. And PB continues to be the most prominent character other than Father Christmas. He helps fill packages of presents and address letters and things. In 1929, he introduces the children to his new alphabet that he has developed, which he claims is easier than Arctic, ah which he spells A-R-K-T-I-K, which PB also has a lot of humorous spelling and grammar errors because he's a bear.
00:30:26
Speaker
So, you know, I'm not sure if that's how father Christmas would spell it, but he says that, you know, here, nobody speaks English. We all speak Arctic, but I have come up with my own new alphabet and it's very sort of runic looking. And we learn also in that letter, his given name, which is Karhu, which is very special because he apparently doesn't tell very many people that. Karhu is the Finnish word for bear.
00:30:55
Speaker
i Which makes total sense that whenever I saw like, oh, you know, some sort of little language thing, I had to go and look that up because we know, uh, the professor's relationship with languages. He was a philologist. He studies languages and their relationships to culture. Yeah. Also, he has a little piece of Arctic language here,
00:31:18
Speaker
isn which I didn't write down, but it resembles, uh, early developments of Quenya. Oh, which is the other, other Elvish language than Sindarin. Cause Tolkien had started developing Quenya by this point. I kind of got that vibe from it a little bit. I didn't Google that phrase specifically cause I had a feeling you might have, but that makes a lot of sense. So Arctic is Quenya basically. That is amazing. I also love in that letter.
00:31:53
Speaker
that PB includes just kind of an abstract lumpy shape, but it's labeled me paw, but me is spelled M-I. It just got me because it was so cute. Like, what is a polar bear going to write about? This is a picture of of me paw. And then there's also a letter from Father Christmas about other stuff, but really the North polar bear captured my heart in that one. In 1930, polar bear has whooping cough.
00:32:22
Speaker
he which almost says to me that one of the kids got it at some point during the year. I feel like there's there's little things that happened to them throughout these letters up at the North Pole that say to me like, oh, this is this is clearly meant to like sympathize with something that happened to the kids this year. isn um Also in 1930, Father Christmas greets the stuffed animals. Yes, that was so sweet.
00:32:53
Speaker
clearly that the boys must have written to him about? Yeah. It's acknowledging their many letters, including some that seem to have been written from the stuffed animals, not just about them, but from their perspective.
00:33:09
Speaker
That letter also includes a little postscript that says, Chris has no need to be frightened of me. Which, what was going on there? Why was Christopher afraid of Father Christmas? Honestly, that makes total sense to me, because at this point, Christopher is six. And I'm sure it's frightening to think about a random strange man that you've never met.
00:33:33
Speaker
who writes you letters and comes into your home. Yeah. Oh, buddy. Unheard and unseen. I'm sure that's a little bit scary. Yeah. The other thing, and then 1931 we start getting some new bits of lore building in the world, right? We learn that Father Christmas has a green brother. Mm-hmm.
00:33:57
Speaker
which some cursory googling of that says that the Green Brother either could have been like a summer representation. like sort of Tolkien attaching like older Yule spirits into the tradition, um some sort of summer figure like the green knight, or also an attempt to explain why some drawings of Father Christmas show him in green robes instead of red ones. But I did think that the green brother for Father Christmas does imply the existence also of a yellow brother and a purple brother.
00:34:32
Speaker
Um, cause if father Christmas has a Luigi, then also, uh, implies the existence of a father Christmas, Mario and apart other Christmas, Waluigi waiting for the other Santa boot to drop. Anyway, I also had noticed some things from 1931, which is this was another year with two letters. The first one was delivered on Halloween. Another one closer to Christmas. I don't remember which one had this quote from it.
00:34:59
Speaker
But this year is acknowledging that John is starting to get a little bit old for Father Christmas, and there's a really sweet quote, and this sentiment comes up a couple of times as the kids continue to get older. I don't forget people even when they are past stocking age, not until they forget me. So I send love to you all, and especially little P.M. Priscilla, who is beginning her stocking days, and I hope they will be happy.
00:35:25
Speaker
So sweet. And the picture for this one really looks like his illustration for the cover of The Hobbit. It's got the sun and the mountains and sort of the bands of little designs underneath it. It was giving that same vibe to me. Oh, it does. Yeah. Well, I'll put that one on the Insta. They're all so beautiful. I had a couple of favorites that I was considering to send you for the post, but They're lovely. There is an audio version of the letters, which is great. You know, we're pro audio book, but I really encourage getting the text so that you can see the pictures because they're so delightful. Mm-hmm. There's also two more bears who are introduced who are polar bears, nephews. Their names are Paxu and Valkotuka, which are also Finnish words that translate as fat and white hair.
00:36:21
Speaker
Oh, I love it so much. And then like in like 1932 and 1933, we get yet more lore. The letters are getting longer and more involved, right? And this is also where we start seeing like polar bear goes missing for days at a time. And that's when and Father Christmas gets worried. sure And this is where we get introduced to the goblins.
00:36:46
Speaker
Yes, they attack in 1933 and Father Christmas unleashes his wizard powers on them, which is again, very Gandalf. Yes.
Goblins and Wizard Battles in 1933
00:36:57
Speaker
And there's there's battles. And I think here we're we're seeing the professor tailor the letters to each individual child's interests. Right. We are seeing.
00:37:15
Speaker
great battles which clearly was something that like Michael and Christopher were interested in because it shows up in The Hobbit and such. We're seeing through lines from letter to letter which we know Christopher was interested in.
00:37:29
Speaker
Oh, yes. He was the one who was very particular when he was younger about details in Tolkien's nightly tales about the Hobbit. Was he wearing a green hood or a blue hood? What was the color of the doorknob? Dad, get it together. And then later on you get the the talk of battles falls off.
00:37:55
Speaker
and you get more like poetry and art and such when it's just for Priscilla. In 1933, there's a ah comment about sending a kiss for Priscilla. Tell her my beard is quite nice and soft as I have never shaved, which definitely says to me that she gets upset if her father's beard is too scratchy. Yeah. And polar bear also greets them as chaps and chaplet. Yeah. Which so cute. Made me so happy.
00:38:25
Speaker
Cause she's just, she's a little, she's just a little baby chocolate. Well, but, uh, he was saying, is that the feminine form?
00:38:34
Speaker
But also I think, you know, in our, in our gender studies podcast, we can, we can say it's also just cause she's small, not cause she's a woman. I mean, it's all, it's all cute. It's all wonderful. I.
00:38:49
Speaker
do not hold the North polar bear to any standards of understanding gender whatsoever. I also really love the signature in 1933, which is yours and yours ever and annually. Oh, yeah. Because like that that signature, you know, typically reads like yours ever and always. But it's yours ever and annually because he writes to them once or twice a year. Which is so cute.
00:39:18
Speaker
And then after that, 1934, 1936, I didn't really have anything specific for those years, um but I did have stuff for 1937. Well, in 1936, we get the introduction of the elf, Ilbereth. I was wondering, I didn't write down the first year of the Ilbereth shows up, so that's good to know. Ilbereth is Father Christmas's secretary.
00:39:43
Speaker
and our third sort of main character. Yes, and and from this point onward, we'll see Elbereth also either writing letters of his own or inserting annotations into the letters. We, of course, are familiar with a very similar character ah by the name of Elbereth, who Elbereth Gilthoniel or Varda is the queen of the stars.
00:40:14
Speaker
um But Ilbereth is a male elf. Also, a couple of years earlier, when they had gone down into the caves of the goblins, they had found an alphabet. They'd mentioned that. And apparently, in the letters, Chris had asked for the polar bear to send that alphabet. And so the alphabet gets sent.
00:40:42
Speaker
Yeah. Which is just, this is great because this is this is clearly one of Tolkien's interests that he is passing on to his son of language development. I love it. And I think specifically it's in the it's the alphabet, but then there's also kind of a little worksheet and the polar bear says, you don't have to do the worksheet if you don't want to, but I think you might want to. And you know, he just had, Tolkien just had a blast coming up with this The goblin alphabet, all the shapes kind of look like little, like people, sort of cave drawings of humanoid shapes. Yeah. Pictographic. Yeah. It's very pictographic in such a way that like, my room was like, it's almost like a semaphore made into a um into an alphabet, into a lettering system.
00:41:41
Speaker
which is kind of fun. Also in in sort of this two year period, 1936, 1937, Ilbereth writes some Elvish as well, which isn't translated, but this shows in 1937 that Elvish, when when he was publishing The Hobbit, Elvish was very well developed by that point.
00:42:02
Speaker
yeah The Hobbit came out in September of 1937, and Father Christmas says in the 1937 letter that he was going to send copie copies of The Hobbit as he's sending many, many places, but he knows they have some. So he's sending them other books instead. And then in 1938 is when we start getting addressed to just Priscilla.
00:42:25
Speaker
And slightly before that, just in 1937, we learn that PB hates Ilbereth. They do not get along at all. They had a little exchange where Ilbereth is talking about the polar bear catching fire as he's trying to save something from the Christmas tree. And Ilbereth says, luckily he was rather damp or he might've fizzled. I wonder if roast polar is good to eat. And then there's a little note from PB.
00:42:52
Speaker
Not as good as a well-spanked and fried elf. Get him, PB. So they have a very, also in 1937, PB invents a new writing system that's even better than Arctic. So he is just out inventing languages and we love that. But yes, 1938 we get letters to just Priscilla.
00:43:15
Speaker
who in 1938, of course, is now nine. And the whole back half of the letter is poet is a poem. It's all done in like rhyming couplets, isn't but it's all slant rhymes. And we know that Tolkien is a talented poet. And so I really like this because you know when when you are talented at something, it's very hard to do it badly.
00:43:45
Speaker
And so he's clearly like purposefully doing this, you know, not quite right, just to show like, this isn't Father Christmas's forte. And, you know, in between all the lines of the poem, you get interjections from PB being like, oh, that's so bad.
00:44:02
Speaker
There's also references to the bingos, which I think is what Priscilla called her stuffed animals. It is. Yes. yeah Okay. Because I was thinking, well, maybe there are cats, but there was no way that she had like seven cats. but He refers to the Bingos by name, Raggles and Predley and Tinker and Taylor and Jubilee and Snowball, just to name a few in case you were wondering. But I love that. I love all of the specific addresses to the stuffed animals. I think that's very cute. A fun fact. In early, early drafts of Lord of the Rings, Frodo's name is Bingo Bulger Baggins after the Bingos.
00:44:49
Speaker
Stop, that is so cute.
00:44:55
Speaker
The bingos. And I think that that is something that was just a Priscilla-ism because I was Googling to see if this was a common slang term in England at the time for stuffed animals. now I think that was just a herd thing. I think it was ah like they were a family of stuffed animals that she kept. Yeah, the bingos. And they were the bingo family.
00:45:20
Speaker
And go ahead. Oh, say and we can enjoy that for about half a page because in 1939 we get the start of World War Two in England and many of Santa's messengers have died in the war.
00:45:38
Speaker
So, well, he doesn't say specifically they died in the war, but they've disappeared and not come back. And not even the North Pole is safe from global conflict. Interestingly, so the introduction of the goblins is in 1932 and they make their big attack in 1933. And some scholars have interpreted the goblins as sort of tokens fantastical commentary on the Nazi party. Spicy. h As you know being a looming danger and then in 1933 when they came to power that that's represented by the attack. I have to wonder if these scholars are
00:46:35
Speaker
correct, I don't necessarily think they are. you know Again, clearly Tolkien was influenced by things around him um and events of particular years when he was writing these letters, but we know that he's not necessarily deliberately giving in to allegory. Maybe more so in these letters because they're you know meant for his kids, but I don't i don't I did not read the goblins as specifically meant to be the Nazis.
00:47:12
Speaker
I didn't either. I interpreted it as this is just a conflict to make Father Christmas's world exciting. And then as things sort of ramp up in the real world, they ramp up in the letters. In 1940, we get an influx of penguins to the North Pole, which do not typically live at the North Pole. If you are a grown adult who sometimes forgets which animals are which, that's okay. Penguins are typically in the South Pole and you have polar bears in the North. It's fine.
00:47:42
Speaker
But they apparently are there not to escape war, but to find it because the penguins want to fight. And I love that. They want to help Father Christmas against the goblins. So go get them penguins. It's so much fun. Throughout the next couple of years, because the next few letters are very short um from like 19 39 through 1942, they become much shorter. It's sort of clear Priscilla's growing out of this. yeah It's possible that things were just stressful ah between 1940 and 1942. Father Christmas continuously mentions things being difficult to get, being like, I'm so sorry, I couldn't find this one thing on your list.
00:48:35
Speaker
I've presented something else. I'm not able to get things to many children this year. And I have to, again, keeping in with your parental explanations theory that you mentioned previously about the fireworks. Yeah. This feels like an explanation for rationing.
00:48:56
Speaker
Absolutely. And in another sort of humorously extreme rationing example, in 1942, we get a highlight of one of the bingo specifically, who is Billy Bear. And Billy Bear will come up again. And the polar bear loves Billy Bear because he considers all bears to be his relations. And so The polar bear is very interested in writing notes specifically to Billy. And I had a quote from 1942, message to Billy bear from polar bear. Sorry, I could not send you a really good bomb. All our powder has gone up in a big bang. You would have seen what a really good explosion is like if you'd been there, which
00:49:42
Speaker
is funny because it's the polar bear. But polar bear, were you going to send this child a bomb? That's like in Stardew Valley when you open your mail and you get a bomb from Maru or from Kent. Why did you have this? Why did you send it in the mail? That's a bad idea.
00:50:01
Speaker
See, it's, it's funniest cause like Maru's just like, Hey, I thought you might like this. And Kent's letters are specifically like, Hey, this is something I brought back from the war. It's like, Kent, why are you bringing me unexploded ordinance? In 1942, it does mention that polar bear was searching through his letters and couldn't find one from Priscilla, which says to me, she didn't write a letter that year.
00:50:30
Speaker
Heartbreaking. She was 13. So I have to wonder if she was, you know, she was probably growing out of it. I'm gonna cry real tears for so long. Well, yes, very much so because the next year is the last letter.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah. And this is this is around the same age that her brothers also stopped hanging their stockings, which seems to be, you know, it's it seems like their family tradition was stocking presents are from Father Christmas, presents under the tree from mom and dad type of thing. um So this is her last year hanging a stocking. And I do have a quote from this, but if you want to do a quote or have other commentary, by all means.
00:51:16
Speaker
i I think I have probably the same quote if I look in our documents. There is, you know, mentions of the war and apparently things are very grim. It's miserable in many places, I fear, in very many places where I was specially fond of going. But I'm very glad to hear that you are still not really miserable. Don't be. I'm still very much alive and shall come back again soon as merry as ever.
00:51:45
Speaker
But that is, of course, not the quote that we both wrote down. Do you want me to do it? No. We are both listeners. We are both so choked up. We don't have children. These aren't our children. But it's a deeply emotionally affecting. This is just, you know, coming up with editing and all that probably be around about an hour of podcast. This is just barely skimming the surface of these letters, which still are not that long, but they really
00:52:18
Speaker
because they're so personal and they I don't think were ever meant to be seen by anyone outside the family they have so much heart in them and so these aren't just abstract characters this is a parent reckoning with his kids growing up in the middle of a horrible war and trying to maintain some sort of magic and joy for them like it's brutal yeah I suppose you will be hanging up your stocking just once more. I hope so, for I still have 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're grown up and have houses of their own and children.
00:53:09
Speaker
We have a little entreaty from Polar Bear wanting to know if Priscilla still has Silly Billy or if he's all worn out now.
Final Emotional Letter in 1943
00:53:17
Speaker
And the illustration for this one is... not the most, it's not an illustration of anything particularly happening in the story, it's just sort of the bookend to this whole experience and it is in my opinion the most beautiful. It's this extremely detailed painting of the earth and moon and stars and this magical
00:53:43
Speaker
night sky, the Earth that's seen from space. And it's still magical. It's still incredible. But it's a little more grown up. It's a little more sophisticated. It's something to appeal to this growing teenager.
00:54:00
Speaker
who clearly has a love for reading and books because the last couple of years have all been about, oh, we couldn't find this book because of the war. Or I think one year it was mentioned that the goblins burned something, but I brought you different books. And this last this last letter says, I have sent nearly all the books you asked for. I hope your stocking will seem full. And it does end, and it ends with very much love from your old friend, Father Christmas.
00:54:30
Speaker
I think you can slightly tell that at a certain point Tolkien was enjoying this more than Priscilla was. Um, but I think, you know, she was like being a good sport. Yeah. And, you know, I think it's the kind of thing that as adults now looking back and, you know, being in the position, like we said at the beginning of the episode of developing our own holiday traditions and figuring out how we are going to make and rituals that feel meaningful for us that still feel celebratory and special.
00:55:06
Speaker
now being able to understand everything that our families did for us, even when we maybe got a little too old for it, maybe thought it was a bit lame at some points, you know, but this is a particularly beautiful and internally consistent and well-preserved example. And I would have hated to be a parent of like the friends of the Tolkien kids going, oh my God,
00:55:33
Speaker
The professor is doing this. This is like the, you know, just impossible standards. Like, I can't do this. I can't paint. I'll do something else for my kid. But, you know, this is just one example. Not everyone is writing the Father Christmas letters for their kids, but it it transcends its context as much as it illustrates it.
00:55:57
Speaker
The runic lettering that Polar Bear used was really familiar to me because my parents wrote me letters from Santa Claus, which was actually how I figured out that Santa Claus was my parents. Of course you did. Because because ah they used the same handwriting as the little letters that they left for the from the tooth fairy.
00:56:26
Speaker
How did you confront your parents about this? I don't really remember. I'm sure my mother does. We can ask her about it because I have such a clear image in my mind of baby Rin with the receipts and some tough questions.
00:56:47
Speaker
oh i I was looking through, I did find a couple of little letters, which I will not read on the podcast. No, those are those are for you. You know, those are those are clearly earlier ones. You know, I mean, this is this is clearly something intensely special that Tolkien was doing for his kids and clearly something that was also special to him as well. And something that And even when like individual children were growing out of it, he still kept these same internal stories going through. He would just change sort of the style and the output of the letters to tailor it to whoever the next recipient was. The other reason you can tell it's a very special day is he kept all of these.
00:57:38
Speaker
Now this was compiled in 1976 by Bailey Tolkien, who was Christopher Tolkien's wife. And so the professor died in 1973. So that's a solid 30 years after he stopped writing these. Yeah.
00:57:58
Speaker
There's a conversation that happens a lot between people who have kids and people who don't. When
Sharing Traditions and Family Memories
00:58:05
Speaker
people who don't have kids say, why do you do all of this stuff for your kids when they're so little that they're not going to care about? They're not going to remember. Why do you take your infant to Disney World? Why do you bring your two year old to dance classes or whatever if it's not going to if they're not necessarily going to care, it's not going to influence the rest of their life. And this one guy on Instagram, I wish I could remember who it was saying, you know, they only get one childhood, but I only get one fatherhood. And I want to experience sharing the things that I love with my kids throughout their entire lives. So
00:58:47
Speaker
Yeah, maybe they're not going to remember or maybe they're not going to care. But if this is an opportunity for me to share something special with my kids, that's worthwhile too as a parent. And I think this is also a good example of that. This is a yeah this ah this is a man who grew up with a single mother and then who died when he was still very young. He clearly wants to make sure that his kids have memories of these stories. Because as as we mentioned in our Beowulf episode, you know stories are what make us human.
00:59:34
Speaker
I think Tolkien very much considered, and we can see this through his Beowulf scholarship, that storytelling was sort of one of the most important forms of human expression. But these were a very enjoyable read. I highly recommend them. I don't know if they're a read to your kids type thing. They they could be.
01:00:03
Speaker
you know you could You could theoretically do this like an advent calendar. It is 23 years. So you could do a year, a year a night. Yeah, that could be fun. Through the month of December.
01:00:18
Speaker
You know, and we hope wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever state the world is in, when this episode comes out, that you are able to share some stories, share some time with the people you love. Thanks for sharing some time with us. We really appreciate you all being here. Whether you are celebrating a festival of light or the longest night of the year,
01:00:47
Speaker
or the birth of Jesus or any other holiday. I hope it is filled with love and good food. I think that's where we're gonna leave y'all. Happy holidays, we'll see you next time. See you in the new year.
01:01:04
Speaker
The Phantom Apprentice is produced and edited by Rin and Sam. Our music was composed and performed by James, and our art is by