[Legate of Amon Lanc]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

In fact last year I used one of the illustrations for my Christmas avatar, so this year it will be even more apt.

Exactly! A lovely avvie there, Bb. I feel also that this rises my traditional Christmas-avvie to a completely new level (since I've had this for every Christmas, I think, since the second year of my 'Downsing).

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

The roundness of Father Christmas' house makes me think of Scandinavian depictions of the figure--it isn't really an Inuit igloo!

So how do North American depictions of the house look like, anyway?

For that matter, I wouldn't find this surprising at all - Tolkien's FC seems to be much more "European", and so why not "more Scandinavian". As I believe we will bump to that also in the future, there is this interesting thing (and now putting aside all possible personal indoctrinations of mine, if you get my meaning) about something Finnish in Tolkien's "Father Christmas Letters-setting", so to say (what made me think of this is the polar bears' identity, but like I said, we'll get into that eventually). So I wonder if that is where this "Scandinavian tone" comes from - because the whole setting was somewhat Scandinavian to begin with, perhaps?

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

Interesting question, Elempi! I was thinking that they look like snow stalagmites, but they are not under the eaves of the house, so how would they have been formed? And they're not trees (which was another first thought of mine) because the trees that are shown are not snow-covered. Actually, I wonder - why not?! You'd think anything at the North Pole would be covered by snow and/or ice. Some kind of standing stones? More new questions than answers...

Now that would certainly raise interest. What about standing "stones" made actually of snow/ice? You know, like, if you want to put up standing stones up there, you don't really have the material, so you make them out of something else... in this case, snow.

Lal, I think you're on the right track concerning the age - there is a slight discrepancy between the historical year 0 and the actual date of Christ's birth. And Father Christmas would come into existence with the birth of Jesus, I guess - at least Tolkien imagined it to be so.

However, there's an inconsistency between that date and the name with which FC signs - the only time, as far as I have seen at least: "Father Nicholas Christmas". That would point to St. Nicholas (who morphed into Santa Claus), born much later than Jesus.

I think the original thought about the birth of Jesus makes sense. As for the St. Nicholas thing, I think it wouldn't matter in that respect - I would say Tolkien was thinking along the lines that Father Christmas is simply Father Christmas, as a powerful magical being as old as Christmas, he simply was born at the same as the reason for Christmas was - and that means, of course, at the same as Christ. There are some other things related to this in one of the latter letters, if I recall correctly, so maybe let's wait with it up to then. But generally, I think Tolkien did not care that much about making it correlate with history, but rather with beliefs of people: if some people also associate Christmas with St. Nicholas (or Santa Claus), then of course he is the same figure as FC. So his first name might be very well Nicholas. (It has also the good effect that Tolkien's kids won't be confused when they suddenly encounter something about some Nicholas. They would just know it's the same person.)

Originally Posted by Estelyn Telcontar

There are two letters for this year, one for John, one for Michael. My edition of the book also pictures the envelope that was made for Michael's letter, with a lovely hand-drawn "North Pole" stamp. It shows a blazing setting or rising sun with one of those ice monoliths in front of it. Typical Tolkien to pay such painstaking attention to details like that! Other than that, my edition shows no drawing - does anyone have something different in their book?

That's brilliant, yes. As for my edition - this is maybe a good time for me to say that: I do have only a Czech translation (however I don't think that disqualifies me from the discussion!) of the Letters which was published here in 1995. Nonetheless, it has all the pictures and stuff and even some photocopies of the original letters (but only of some of them) - others are just translated. However, the letters from 1920-4 are exactly the only one thing which is more or less missing here. There are the few pictures you have mentioned, a photocopy of the 1920 letter, three stamps (including the 1924 one), and then a picture of FC coming over Oxford with his reindeers - with a photocopy of the letter (or part of it) in which he speaks about the picture. However, there is no indication of when the letter is from, or anything else. Most curious. Could you perhaps tell me what it is?

I'm also very curious as to why so much of the 1920-4 stuff is omitted (all later letters are in there in full). I am not able to figure out exactly which edition my book is translated from, but maybe you will be able to figure out what is it, either if you have some similarly weird edition in English or if you can tell by this: my book at least says that it was translated from the original "The Father Christmas Letters, London: HarperCollins 1993".