Tolkien: twenty-four years of letters Father Christmas wrote to his children

On Christmas Eve 1920, a five-year-old boy in Oxford, England, received a letter postmarked from the North Pole.

The handwriting on the envelope was wobbly, a little clumsy, and signed "Father Christmas." Inside, Father Christmas explained that the sleigh had a small problem this year, the reindeer were tired, and the presents might be a little late — please do not worry.

The little boy's name was John, the eldest son of J.R.R. Tolkien. What he did not know was that the letter had not come from the North Pole at all. It had been written by his father, a young Oxford professor of Old English, who had stayed up after the boy was asleep and drawn every line himself.

Tolkien was twenty-eight that year. He had not yet written The Hobbit, let alone The Lord of the Rings. He was simply a young father who wanted his children's Christmas to feel a little more real.

He meant to write one letter. He kept writing for twenty-four years.

Every December, the children received another letter from Father Christmas. The paper grew more colorful each year; the envelopes were covered in Arctic snowscapes, red-nosed reindeer, plump snowmen. The stories grew more elaborate too: Father Christmas's assistant, the North Polar Bear, was always breaking things. Once he punched a hole through the floor of the North Pole. Once a band of golems broke into the toy storeroom. Once an elf living in an ice cave wrote a side letter complaining that Father Christmas's beard was too long.

Tolkien was not just writing letters. He was building a world with his children.

He remembered those years as ones where he lectured by day, graded papers, and carried the wounds of the First World War, and only after the children were asleep could he light a lamp and write Father Christmas's next reply. Sometimes, halfway through a letter, a child would wake, and he would scramble to hide the pages. One year his youngest son threw himself into his arms, and Tolkien stuffed the letter into the fireplace — it nearly burned.

Four children grew up one after another. By the time the eldest, John, was a teenager, he had figured out who Father Christmas really was. He never said a word. He and his father kept the secret together, as if they were still waiting for the letter. By the time the youngest, Christopher, was fourteen, Tolkien let Father Christmas announce in the final letter: I am getting old. This year I retire. From now on, you will write the letters to your younger brothers and sisters.

That year, the youngest was fourteen.

A fairy tale is not tricking children into believing something that is not there. It is a father willing to spend twenty years taking a game seriously, with them.

Those letters were later published as Letters from Father Christmas. But in Tolkien's mind, they were never a book. They were the longest bedtime story a father could give his children.

Many years later, Christopher Tolkien, himself a professor, was sorting his father's papers and said: as a child, the thing he looked forward to most every December was not the presents. It was that wobbly letter. Because you knew that dad — who was so busy he barely saw you all week — had taken several nights, in this particular year, just to write something for you.

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings went on to be read by hundreds of millions. But Tolkien said the original reason he wrote that vast world of Middle-earth was simple: he wanted his children to have somewhere more interesting than reality to live inside.

The best inheritance a father can leave is not a house or savings. It is a dream you once built together.