Letters from Father Christmas by JRR Tolkien. 1932. Part 1.
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Thank you for your nice letters. I have not forgotten you. I am very late this year and very worried— a very funny thing has happened. The Polar Bear has disappeared, and I don’t know where he is. I have not seen him since the beginning of this month, and I am getting anxious Tomorrow December, the Christmas month, begins, and I don’t know what I shall do without him.
I am glad you are all well and your many pets. The Snowbabies holidays begin tomorrow. I wish Polar Bear was here to look after them. Love to Michael, Christopher and Priscilla. Please send John my love when you write to him.
Father N. Christmas.
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There is a lot to tell you. First of all a Merry Christmas! But there have been lots of adventures you will want to hear about. It all began with the funny noises underground which started in the summer and got worse and worse. I was afraid an earthquake might happen. The North Polar Bear says he suspected what was wrong from the beginning. I only wish he had said something to me; and anyway it can’t be quite true, as he was fast asleep when it began, and did not wake up till about Michael’s birthday.
However, he went off for a walk one day, at the end of November I think, and never came back!
About a fortnight ago I began to be really worried, for after all the dear old thing is really a lot of help, in spite of accidents, and very amusing.
One Friday evening (December 9th) there was a bumping at the front door, and a snuffling. I thought he had come back, and lost his key (as often before); but when I opened the door there was another very old bear there, a very fat and funny-shaped one. Actually it was the eldest of the few remaining cave-bears, old Mr Cave Bear himself (I had not seen him for centuries).
“Do you want your North Polar Bear?” he said. “If you do you had better come and get him!” It turned out he was lost in the caves (belonging to Mr Cave Bear, or so he says) not far from the ruins of my old house. He says he found a hole in the side of a hill and went inside because it was snowing. He slipped down a long slope, and lots of rock fell after him, and he found he could not climb up or get out again.
But almost at once he smelt goblin! and became interested, and started to explore. Not very wise; for of course goblins can’t hurt him, but their caves are very dangerous.
Naturally he soon got quite lost, and the goblins shut off all their lights, and made queer noises and false echoes.
Goblins are to us very much what rats are to you, only worse because they are very clever; and only better because there are, in these parts, very few. We thought there were none left. Long ago we had great trouble with them—that was about 1453 l believe—but we got the help of the Gnomes, who are their greatest enemies, and cleared them out.
Anyway, there was poor old Polar Bear lost in the dark all among them, and all alone until he met Mr Cave Bear (who lives there). Cave Bear can see pretty well in the dark, and he offered to take Polar Bear to his private back-door.
So they set off together, but the goblins were very excited and angry (Polar Bear had boxed one or two flat that came and poked him in the dark, and had said some very nasty things to them all); and they enticed him away by imitating Cave Bear’s voice, which of course they know very well. So Polar Bear got into a frightful dark part, all full of different passages, and he lost Cave Bear, and Cave Bear lost him.
“Light is what we need.” said Cave Bear to me. So I got some of my special sparkling torches – which I sometimes use in my deepest cellars-and we set off that night.
The caves are wonderful. I knew they were there, but not how many or how big they were. Of course the goblins went off into the deepest holes and corners, and we soon found Polar Bear. He was getting quite long and thin with hunger, as he had been in the caves about a fortnight. He said, “I should soon have been able to squeeze through a goblin-crack.”
Polar Bear himself was astonished when I brought light; for the most remarkable thing is that the walls of these caves are all covered with pictures, cut into the rock or painted on in red and brown and black.
Some of them are very good (mostly of animals), and some are queer and some bad; and there are many strange marks, signs and scribbles, some of which have a nasty look, and I am sure have something to do with black magic.
Cave Bear says these caves belong to him, and have belonged to him or his family since the days of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (multiplied by ten) grandfather; and the bears first had the idea of decorating the walls, and used to scratch pictures on them on soft parts-it was useful for sharpening the claws.
Then Men came along—imagine it! Cave Bear says there were lots about at one time, long ago, when the North Pole was somewhere else. (That was long before my time, and I have never heard old Grandfather Yule mention it even, so I don’t know if he is talking nonsense or not).
Many of the pictures were done by these cave-men—the best ones, especially the big ones (almost life-size) of animals, some of which have since disappeared: there are dragons and quite a lot of mammoths. Men also put some of the black marks and pictures there; but the goblins have scribbled all over the place. They can’t draw well and anyway they like nasty queer shapes best. North Polar Bear got quite excited when he saw all these things. He said: “These cave-people could draw better than you, Daddy Noel; and wouldn’t your young friends just like to see some really good pictures (especially some properly drawn bears) for a change!”
Rather rude, I thought, if only a joke; as I take a lot of trouble over my Christmas pictures: some of them take quite a minute to do; and though I only send them to special friends, I have a good many in different places. So just to show him (and to please you) I have copied a whole page from the wall of the chief central cave, and I send you a copy.
It is not, perhaps, quite as well drawn as the originals (which are very, very much larger)— except the goblin parts, which are easy. They are the only parts the Polar Bear can do at all. He says he likes them best, but that is only because he can copy them.
The goblin pictures must be very old, because the goblin fighters are sitting on drasils: a very queer sort of dwarf ‘dachshund’ horse creature they used to use, but they have died out long ago. I believe the Red Gnomes finished them off, somewhere about Edward the Fourth’s time.
The animal drawings are magnificent. The hairy rhinoceros looks wicked. There is also a nasty look in the mammoth’s eyes. Also the ox, stag, bear, and cave-bear (portrait of Mr Cave Bear’s seventy-first ancestor, he says), and some other kind of polarish but not quite polar bear. North Polar Bear would like to believe it is a portrait of one of his ancestors! Just under the bears is the best a goblin can do at drawing reindeer!!!