Multitudes Christmas 2024: Tolkien, Bob Dylan, Brenda Lee, Maurice Sendak, Charles Schulz and Churchill.

Merry Christmas to those who observe it! Gathered a few ideas, stories, and songs. Hope they bring you joy today. Alright, back to family. 🎄

- Julian

Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters (1925)

For over twenty years, J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Christmas letters to his children. Each letter came from Father Christmas himself, telling stories of life at the North Pole.

The letters described Father Christmas's adventures with his clumsy friend the North Polar Bear. They included detailed illustrations and writing that made them feel magical and real.

The Tolkien family published these letters as The Father Christmas Letters. Here's one from 1925, along with Tolkien's original artwork. Pay special attention to his handwritten notes in the margins — they’re worth they effort to read.

I am dreadfully busy this year - it makes my hand more shaky than ever when I think of it - and not very rich. In fact, awful things have been happening, and some of the presents have got spoilt and I haven't got the North Polar Bear to help me and I have had to move house just before Christmas, so you can imagine what a state everything is in, and you will see why I have a new address. It all happened like this: one very windy day last November my hood blew off and went and stuck on the top of the North Pole. I told him not to, but the North Polar Bear climbed up to the thin top to get it down - and he did. The pole broke in the middle and fell on the roof of my house, and the North Polar Bear fell through the hole it made into the dining room with my hood over his nose, and all the snow fell off the roof into the house and melted and put out all the fires and ran down into the cellars where I was collecting this year's presents, and the North Polar Bear's leg got broken. He is well again now, but I was so cross with him that he says he won't try to help me again. I expect his temper is hurt, and will be mended by next Christmas. I send you a picture of the accident, and of my new house on the cliffs above the North Pole (with beautiful cellars in the cliffs). If John can't read my old shaky writing (1925 years old) he must get his father to. When is Michael going to learn to read, and write his own letters to me? Lots of love to you both and Christopher, whose name is rather like mine.

Hard to say which caption I like more… “Me! Angry” or “The moon laughed”

Musical prodigy Brenda Lee recording "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" at age 13

Earlier this week, I learned that this song was recorded by a 13-year-old. It’s a remarkable performance as Brenda Lee sounds like someone at least twice that age. Play it in the background as you read the rest (YouTube / Spotify).

It’s interesting to contrast how talent was discovered and developed in the 1950s compared to now. Lee grew up she sharing a bed with her brother and sister in houses without running water. She began singing solos every Sunday at church:

Though her family did not have indoor plumbing until after her father's death, they had a battery-powered table radio that fascinated Brenda as a baby. At age five, she won first place at her school's talent show contest, where she sang "Take Me Out to the Ball Game". Her performance received positive reviews, leading her to make regular appearances on local radio and television shows.

I was inspired by the the story of Brenda (and presumably her mother — she was just 10 at the time) making a serious short-term monetary sacrifice to pursue something bigger. At the time Brenda was the primary breadwinner for the family:

Lee's breakthrough came in February 1955, when she turned down $30 ($334 in 2022 value) to appear on a Swainsboro radio station in order to see Red Foley and a touring promotional unit of his ABC-TV program Ozark Jubilee in Augusta. An Augusta disc jockey persuaded Foley to hear her sing before the show. Foley did and agreed to let her perform "Jambalaya" on stage that night, unrehearsed. Foley later recounted the moments following her introduction:

“I still get cold chills thinking about the first time I heard that voice. One foot started patting rhythm as though she was stomping out a prairie fire but not another muscle in that little body even as much as twitched. And when she did that trick of breaking her voice, it jarred me out of my trance enough to realize I'd forgotten to get off the stage. There I stood, after 26 years of supposedly learning how to conduct myself in front of an audience, with my mouth open two miles wide and a glassy stare in my eyes.”

3 years later, Lee would record Rockin’ in the middle of a hot Nashville summer.

“Rockin’” was written by Johnny Marks, a Jewish songwriter who also penned “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and “A Holly Jolly Christmas.” According to Lee, who struck up a lifelong friendship with Marks, after he wrote the song he told a publisher friend, “I want Brenda Lee to do this song.” Looking back, Lee isn’t quite sure what led Marks to seek her out: “I was only 12, and I had not had a lot of success in records, but for some reason he heard me and wanted me to do it. And I did.”

The song didn't catch on at first. It only became a hit when it was re-released after Lee became famous - just like The Wizard of Oz, which became a classic only after Judy Garland became a star through her role in the Christmas film Meet Me in St. Louis (highly recommended)

Churchill’s Christmas Message (1941)

In December 1941, just weeks after Pearl Harbor, Churchill gave a remarkable Christmas Eve speech from the White House rather than his home in Britain. What stands out is how he does two things at once: he highlights everything Britain and America share in common, while making the case that even in the darkest days of war, celebrating Christmas matters more than ever.

December 24, 1941 | Washington, D.C.
I spend this anniversary and festival far from my country, far from my family, yet I cannot truthfully say that I feel far from home. Whether it be the ties of blood on my mother’s side, or the friendships I have developed here over many years of active life, or the commanding sentiment of comradeship in the common cause of great peoples who speak the same language, who kneel at the same altars and, to a very large extent, pursue the same ideals, I cannot feel myself a stranger here in the centre and at the summit of the United States. I feel a sense of unity and fraternal association which, added to the kindliness of your welcome, convinces me that I have a right to sit at your fireside and share your Christmas joys.

This is a strange Christmas Eve. Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and, with the most terrible weapons which science can devise, the nations advance upon each other. Ill would it be for us this Christmastide if we were not sure that no greed for the land or wealth of any other people, no vulgar ambition, no morbid lust for material gain at the expense of others, had led us to the field. Here, in the midst of war, raging and roaring over all the lands and seas, creeping nearer to our hearts and homes, here, amid all the tumult, we have tonight the peace of the spirit in each cottage home and in every generous heart. Therefore we may cast aside for this night at least the cares and dangers which beset us, and make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Here, then, for one night only, each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly-lighted island of happiness and peace.

Let the children have their night of fun and laughter. Let the gifts of Father Christmas delight their play. Let us grown-ups share to the full in their unstinted pleasures before we turn again to the stern task and the formidable years that lie before us, resolved that, by our sacrifice and daring, these same children shall not be robbed of their inheritance or denied their right to live in a free and decent world.

And so, in God’s mercy, a happy Christmas to you all.