Each year from 1923 to 1943, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote elaborate letters from Father Christmas to his four children, with hand-drawn illustrations and characters including, of course, elves. After 1938, Tolkien addressed only his youngest, Priscilla, as her three older brothers had left the household. By 1943, Priscilla was 14, and Tolkien knew this would be the last Father Christmas letter after two decades of family Christmases.
“After this, I shall have to say ‘goodbye,’ more or less,” Father Christmas wrote, but he will “come back again soon, as merry as ever. There has been no damage in my country.” Tolkien added the picture above.
Tolkien’s last wartime gift to his “little children” (to use a form of address John loved) was a drawing of the world, the same world torn apart by war, the world God so loved, and the world referred to in the last verses of John as “cosmos” in Hart’s translation:
“And there are many other things that Jesus also did, which, were they written down one by one, I think the cosmos itself would not contain the books that would be written.” (John 21:25 DBH)
Here the word John uses for “other things” is the Greek “allos” meaning other similar things, rather than “heteros” meaning other different things. When Tolkien’s Father Christmas wrote “There has been no damage in my country,” Tolkien was communicating “allos,” similar things of peace and hope, that harmonize with the things Jesus spoke and did in the Gospel of John.
Tolkien’s stories spoke of the North Pole as an image of heaven, the same heaven where the Father’s will is done, and from which the Son and Spirit proceed. The Good News is that even in time of a World War destroying so much of that world, the God and Father of Father Christmas is above time and space, and Jesus sits at His right hand.
His Kingdom shall never end, and now that we have seen “the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man,” (John 1:51) this Kingdom of Heaven is deeply connected to earth in Christ. Fr. Stephen Freeman speaks of this eternal Kingdom, which takes “no damage” from wars and rumors of wars:
“The mystery of the Kingdom of God is not the work of human beings, nor part of a historical process. The Kingdom of God is whole and complete and always has been (and it cannot be otherwise). This is utterly essential in understanding the proclamation of the gospel as well as its place in our lives (or, rather, our lives’ place within it). The Kingdom of God is hidden and revealed – it comes by revelation, by manifestation, by in-breaking, by uncovering. It was hidden from the beginning, and always existed from the beginning in its fullness.”
John 21:25 speaks of the many books Jesus’s followers could write. The writing of these books was a work he left to us. The only record we have of Jesus writing was scribbling with his finger in the dust in John 8:6,8. But Jesus was always writing living books, inscribing the eternal Word in transformed hearts. Occasionally this Word is transcribed and translated into earthly words, and passed down to us.
When it comes to what Jesus did, words aren’t even the half of it. Jesus gave many meals. He gave bread and fish to the five thousand, the First Breakfast to seven disciples, and the Eucharist to all of us who dare to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Jesus healed bodies and minds. Like Jesus said when asked to give evidence at his own trial, what mattered is deep in his disciples’ hearts:
“Why do you question me? Question those who have listened to what I told them; look: They know the things I have said.” (John 19:20)
John knew the things Jesus said, and J.R.R. Tolkien, and George Frederic Handel. My family listens through Handel’s Messiah on the schedule of an advent calendar each year, like the tradition of Tolkien’s Father Christmas letters. The Messiah only is about one-third specific to Christmas – after December 5 in the Advent Calendar listening schedule, we’ve moved on to other scriptures.
But the “whole and complete” nature of the Kingdom of God, and the unity of the Son with the Father and Spirit, this means that it’s all Christmas in a sense, and it’s all Easter. It’s all Incarnation, which is what we need desperately. It’s all Jesus, Emmanuel, God with Us.
The eternal Kingdom is breaking into space, and manifesting in time, as each window of each Advent Calendar is opened. Now this year’s calendar is complete, and Jesus leaves us with “As the Father has sent me, I also send you.” (John 20:21)
Don’t lose sight of the fact that “It is finished.” The goal is already completed, and often God drops grace in your lap without any work on your part. Work is not essential, but for those who are called, the work itself can be a good gift. There’s a joy that happens when you scratch the surface of reality and clean off the grime to find the golden, eternal Kingdom underneath it all, a Kingdom that has been there all along. This is the country that takes no damage. It’s not your possession but it’s yours to pass on.
No, the whole cosmos can’t contain the books that could be written, but there’s always room for one more. You can add to its number, one work at a time, like followers of Jesus have done throughout the centuries. You can participate in creation by creating, whether it’s a letter, a meal, a song, or a chapter, whether it’s giving alms to the poor or giving a glass of water to a little one, however small or big the creation, however small or big its reception.
This is the Kingdom of God – it’s less like building a tower, and more like opening a gift.
IMAGE: Letters from Father Christmas, by J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin), p.111.
QUOTE: Stephen Freeman, Glory to God for All Things, “Mystery as Reality,” March 5, 2021.
