** Father Christmas 1935 **

[Elizabeth]

Again, apologies for the delay. Lots of distractions this time of year! Fortunately, this is another very short letter!

No INK this year, and no water, so no painted pictures; also very cold hands, so very wobbly writing. This year it is frightfully cold -- snow, snow, snow, and ice. We have been simply buried, messengers have got lost, and found themselves in Nova Scotia, if you know where that is, instead of Scotland; and Polar Bear could not get home.

This conjured such a bleak picture for me that I went searching for what was going on in 1935, wondering whether there was some major cold spell, blizzard, or shortage that would have given rise to such a passage.

Alas, I found nothing, either related to possible depression shortages or evil weather.

1. Do you know any reason to believe these environmental challenges are reality-inspiredrather than just narrative interest?

The most charming painting from 1935 has to be the image of N.P.B. in sheepskin coat and red gloves.

2. Why would Polar Bear need a sheepskin coat, even in the coldest weather? Aren't they designed for that?

The Red Elves are trying to be helpful, but having a lot of fun along the way.

N.P.B. reminds everyone that the threat from the Goblins is postponed, but not eliminated: "They are breeding again and multiplying all over the world. Quite a nasty outbreak."

3. Is this a reflection of the growing Nazi threat in Europe? Any other external relevance, or is this just drama internal to the world of the North Pole?

In any case, Fr. C. has armed his Elves with "new magic sparkler spears that will scare them out of their wits."

4. What creatures is this sparkler spear being used against in this picture?

5. How does this new terror-weapon, the "magic sparkler spear" differ from the weapon used in 1933?

This wraps my week. My very best wishes to you for whatever holiday you may be celebrating!

 

[GaladrielTX]

1. Do you know any reason to believe these environmental challenges are reality-inspiredrather than just narrative interest?

Perhaps Tolkien was just trying to come up with some new challenge for the North Pole dwellers. What’s more logical than really bad weather?


N.P.B. reminds everyone that the threat from the Goblins is postponed, but not eliminated: "They are breeding again and multiplying all over the world. Quite a nasty outbreak."

3. Is this a reflection of the growing Nazi threat in Europe? Any other external relevance, or is this just drama internal to the world of the North Pole?

Could be. I kept looking for references to the War in the letters until Father Christmas explicitly mentions it a couple of years from now.


This wraps my week. My very best wishes to you for whatever holiday you may be celebrating!

Thanks, Elizabeth! My respect for the Reading Room discussion leaders like you (and my teachers in the past) has become even greater if possible, as I worked up my week of discussion.

 

[Darkstone]

1. Do you know any reason to believe these environmental challenges are reality-inspiredrather than just narrative interest?

Over several polar expeditions in the 1910s and 1920s explorer Donald MacMillan had made measurements which indicated that Canadian and Greenland glaciers were increasing in mass thus possibly signaling a coming ice age. Of particular interest to Tolkien would have been MacMillan’s discoveries of 1000 year old ruins on Sculpin Island near Labrador, which were similar to Norse settlements in Greenland. Native legends supported the possibility that these were settled by white Europeans, but you know how natives often tell explorers stuff just to get them to go away.

I note there was global warming in the 1930s which produced worldwide drought and the American Dustbowl, followed global cooling in the 1940s producing the coldest European winters on record which saved Soviet Russia from being overrun by Nazi Germany.


2. Why would Polar Bear need a sheepskin coat, even in the coldest weather? Aren't they designed for that?

Why does anyone wear mink when a good cloth coat could do?


N.P.B. reminds everyone that the threat from the Goblins is postponed, but not eliminated: "They are breeding again and multiplying all over the world. Quite a nasty outbreak."

3. Is this a reflection of the growing Nazi threat in Europe? Any other external relevance, or is this just drama internal to the world of the North Pole?

I don’t think it’s Nazism. Hitler had just come to power. Rather it was the wave of “strong man” Fascism which had started with Mussolini and had toppled most of the European democracies set up in the wake of the Great War. During the 1920s and 1930s democracy failed in Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Austria. (Germany was actually a very late adherent to totalitarianism.) We won’t mention what was happening in the rest of the world, such as the alleged “Business Plot” of 1933 which supposedly would have replaced US President FDR with a Fascist dictator. As for Tolkien's own Great Britain, around this time Oswald Mosley and his BUF Blackshirts were kicking up such a fuss that Parliament eventually had to pass the Public Order Act of 1936 to curtail their activities. Mosley and his Fascists remained rather popular in Britain (advocating isolationism and peace) until Germany invaded Norway in 1940.


In any case, Fr. C. has armed his Elves with "new magic sparkler spears that will scare them out of their wits."


4. What creatures is this sparkler spear being used against in this picture?

Looks like Mickey Mouse along with his nephews Morty and Ferdie.


5. How does this new terror-weapon, the "magic sparkler spear" differ from the weapon used in 1933?

The 1935 Model seems to have a shorter stock. It also seems to feature less kickback since the user no longer seems to have to brace himself while firing. Indeed, he seems to be able to easily utilize it in the classic WWI trench warfare hip firing technique known as “walking fire”. (Or in this case, “running fire”.)

 

[Elizabeth]

N.P.B. reminds everyone that the threat from the Goblins is postponed, but not eliminated: "They are breeding again and multiplying all over the world. Quite a nasty outbreak."

3. Is this a reflection of the growing Nazi threat in Europe? Any other external relevance, or is this just drama internal to the world of the North Pole?

I don’t think it’s Nazism. Hitler had just come to power. Rather it was the wave of “strong man” Fascism which had started with Mussolini and had toppled most of the European democracies set up in the wake of the Great War. During the 1920s and 1930s democracy failed in Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Spain, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Albania, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Austria. (Germany was actually a very late adherent to totalitarianism.) We won’t mention what was happening in the rest of the world, such as the alleged “Business Plot” of 1933 which supposedly would have replaced US President FDR with a Fascist dictator. As for Tolkien's own Great Britain, around this time Oswald Mosley and his BUF Blackshirts were kicking up such a fuss that Parliament eventually had to pass the Public Order Act of 1936 to curtail their activities. Mosley and his Fascists remained rather popular in Britain (advocating isolationism and peace) until Germany invaded Norway in 1940. [/QUOTE]

Yep, that's a lot of Goblins. But the Nazis were getting well under way, too. Hitler came to power in 1933. The Nuremburg Laws (restricting Jews in various ways) were adopted in 1935, and there was serious talk about rearmament.

In any case, Fr. C. has armed his Elves with "new magic sparkler spears that will scare them out of their wits."

4. What creatures is this sparkler spear being used against in this picture?

Looks like Mickey Mouse along with his nephews Morty and Ferdie.

So, Fr. C doesn't have any problem with animal testing?

 

[Dreamdeer]

I notice that the goblins have now turned white.

 

[Elizabeth]

The letter just says they are multiplying around the world, and might come back, not that they have come back. And the 1935 creatures don't really look like 1933's Goblins at all: not only are they white, but they have tails!

 

[N.E. Brigand]

In the 1999 edition of Letters from Father Christmas, the original letter appears in its entirety, four pages in all of Fr. C.'s handwriting interspersed with little sketches. The text at this point reads, "I expect I shall have trouble with them soon. I have given my elves", and then breaks off, with the image of the spear-wielding gnome pursuing three rat-like enemies (or one enemy, shown in three poses) before continuing with "some new magic sparkler spears that will scare them out of their wits." As for the color, possibly Tolkien has changed his mind about that as well as about the goblins' physiology, or perhaps it demonstrates that when working in full color he used all-black as a drawing convenience, while here he only outlines them.

It may be that the goblins, which you remember Father C. likened to rats from the very start, are actually brown: there is another apparent picture of a goblin higher on the same page. It is a figure peering onto the page from the left side where the text reads, "He says that we have not seen the last of the goblins--inspite of the battles in 1933." Here is the image:

Or is that a transitional figure between the goblins of 1932-33 and the ones chased by the gnomes below?

 

[N.E. Brigand]

The most charming painting from 1935 has to be the image of N.P.B. in sheepskin coat and red gloves.

And boots and a red scarf, carrying a bag and an umbrella, the latter of which he holds against the rain in one of the year’s other sketches. (And soap and a sponge in his hood, apparently.) So clothed, N.P.B. thinks he resembles “Rye St. Anthony” – who or what is that?

What’s with this year’s running gag, in which Father Christmas keeps following his references to P.B. with variations on the comment, “if you know who I mean”? To which the bear annotates in the margins, “Silly” (three times) and “Stupid Joke”. There was a presage of this in the early letter of 1934: “The Polar Bear, if you remember him, is still fast asleep”, but I don’t understand it.

Note that the Bear is “very good at doctoring anybody but himself”, and sets off for Greenland to tend to P. and V., who are sick – with mumps as it turns out. Is Aragorn part polar bear? Or N.P.B. descended from the half-Elven?

Two-thirds of the way down the second page, next to the picture of the shoveling Red Elves, one of them is peering at the viewer from the edge of the page:

He has a pointed ear!

At the end of the letter, Father Christmas hopes the children “enjoy the pantomime” – apparently they’ll be attending a show. The margins there feature two figures. On the right, this one—a soldier with rifle? a wizard with staff?

And on the left, this little fellow—who is he supposed to be?

Thanks for leading this week’s discussion, Elizabeth!