“If you find that not many of the things you asked for have come, and not perhaps quite so many as sometimes, remember that this Christmas all over the world there are a terrible number of poor and starving people.”

J.R.R. Tolkien, Letters from Father Christmas, 1931

The lord of snows upreared his head;
His mantle long and pale
Upon the bitter blast was spread
And hung o’er hill and dale.
The world was blind,
the boughs were bent,
All ways and paths were wild:
Then the veil of cloud apart was rent,
And here was born a Child.

J.R.R Tolkien, Noel (2e stanza) 1936

“Well here comes Christmas! That astonishing thing that no ‘commercialism’ can in fact defile – unless you let it.”

J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Michael in a letter dated 19 December 1962