Father Christmas Letters: 1937

[Estelyn Telcontar]

This letter has a special relevance to 2012 - it was written in the year that The Hobbit was published, and we Tolkien fans are celebrating the book's 75th birthday this year! As a matter of fact, Father Christmas mentions that he had thought of sending the children the book(s), as there are "loads" of them being given for Christmas, but he thought they would already have enough of them. I wonder which book he is sending instead? He calls it "another Oxford Fairy Story".

One of the things that makes me smile when reading the letter is that Father Christmas sends greetings to the children's father!

As Father Christmas doesn't have much time, he gives the responsibility for drawing a picture to Ilbereth. The page is divided into 9 sections, almost cartoon-style, with various events and a brief comment underneath each.



This image shows only two of the drawings. The one most referred to in the letter is a picture of NPB decorating the Christmas tree, on which he ends up hanging and setting himself on fire. That gives JRRT an opportunity for a pun:

"You are not a decoration," said Father Christmas.
Anyway, I am alight," he [NPB] shouted.

Can anyone who has the book and can read Elvish translate the sentence written by Ilbereth at the end?

[Legolas]

A very Merry Christmas to you all!

It's written using Tengwar script, but the words are spelled in English so you need not translate, only decode. The Tengwar character that looks like "y" here is the English sound r; m = m, i = i/y (ee), q = k, h = s, p = t, ^ = y, o = oo. Now you can see it, eh?

That is some - but Father Christmas says I write even that too spidery and you would never read it.

Love Ilbereth.

And Father Christmas is quite right! Though some of the difficulty decoding might be down to the script still not being finalized yet, indeed if it ever was.

[Guinevere]

Ha! So I was right in my deciphering/ guessing.

I couldn't identify all Tengwar letters though. The writing looks similar to the inscription on the One Ring, which, according to Gandalf, is "Elvish of an ancient mode". But in Ilbereth's writing there are no Tehtar.

[Legolas]

You're right, no tehtar. I'm no scholar on the timeline of Tengwar's development, but it appears at this point the vowels had standalone letters of their own instead (or at least in English mode?).

Tolkien would've had The Hobbit published this year, and just received his publisher's encouragement for writing a sequel around the time of writing this annual letter.