Letters From Santa Mystery Cache

The Father Christmas Letters is a collection of letters written and illustrated by J.R.R Tolkien between 1920 and 1942. Every December an envelope bearing a stamp from the North Pole would arrive for J.R.R.Tolkien’s children. Inside would be a letter in strange spidery handwriting accompanied by a beautiful coloured drawing or some sketches. The letters were from Father Christmas. They told wonderful tales of life at the North Pole: how all the reindeer got loose and scattered presents all over the place; how the accident-prone Polar Bear climbed the North Pole and fell through the roof of Father Christmas’s house into the dining-room; how he broke the Moon into four pieces and made the Man in it fall into the back garden. Year after year the world of Father Christmas grew larger and more complex as Tolkien the inveterate world-builder let his imagination run riot. Eventually, of course, Tolkien’s children outgrew Father Christmas, and the final letter echoes the wistfulness that all parents feel when ‘that’ time arrives.

‘I suppose after this year you will not be hanging your stocking any more. I shall have to say ‘goodbye’, more or less; I mean I shall not forget you. We always keep the names of our old friends, and their letters; and later on we hope to come back when they are grown up and have houses of their own and children…’

THE PUZZLE