Time Marches On: Letters from Father Christmas

Letters from Father Christmas

By: J.R.R. Tolkien

For two decades Tolkien wrote letters every winter to his children, not from himself, but from Santa where he told them stories about life in the North Pole. Prepping for the big day and his adventures with the accident prone North Polar Bear.

And because it’s Tolkien there’s totally a Goblin attack 🙂

I don’t know why I had such a block going into this book. Probably because it’s Tolkien and I think long, complicated and heavy.

Letter from Father Christmas (and the North Polar Bear) is what it says… It’s a simple nice little read. I mainly enjoyed it and I think it would be a great gift for a Tolkien or Christmas lover.

I was reading it trying to figure out if it was good for kids. At first I’d think no- kids today aren’t going to go for this but actually like I said there are explosions and attacks so I think its fun. The pictures weren’t very impressive on my Kindle although I could tell they were well done and a nice physical edition would be.

I say I mostly enjoyed it because it gets a bit melancholy toward the end. Time marches on. The older children stop writing. The youngest starts missing letters and of course the war begins and Santa’s hand gets shakier and shakier until an elf helper takes over. The inevitable can’t be stopped of course but this really is a sweet little time capsule of a time period between wars , of childhood and imagination.

Recommend: Yes. Absolutely.