Book Blogger Hop December 7th - December 13th: There Are 27 Bones in the Human Hand

Jen at Crazy for Books has restarted her weekly Book Blogger Hop to help book bloggers connect with one another. The hop is currently traveling about the blogosphere and is being hosted by Angler's Rest. The only requirements to participate in the Hop are to write and link a post answering the weekly question and then visit other blogs that are also participating to see if you like their blog and would like to follow them. A complete explanation of the history and the rules of the Hop can be found here.

This week Jen asks: We are well into the Festive season, so what is your favourite festive reading?

This is actually an easy question for me to answer: Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a beautiful book, full of stories about Father Christmas written by Tolkien for his children, most of which have accompanying illustrations lovingly crafted by the author. The interesting thing about the book is that it's contents were never really intended to be used in a book. Each year, as most children do, Tolkien's children would write letters to Father Christmas. But in the Tolkien household, Father Christmas, or his elvish secretary, would write back.

Those letters are what make up the bulk of this book. And Father Christmas didn't just write perfunctory responses. He told stories about what had happened to him and his friend the North Polar Bear in the past year (sometimes with extra comments added by the Polar Bear himself in his crude handwriting). First Father Christmas writes from Christmas House located right next to the tall and imposing North Pole, but after the North Polar Bear accidentally broke the pole while climbing on it, causing the spire to fall onto and destroy Christmas House, Father Christmas built a new house on a nearby cliff which he called Cliff House. The adventures continue through the pages, from minor misadventures such as the Polar Bear falling down the stairs while trying to help pack Christmas presents, to explaining the Northern Lights as Father Christmas' massive fireworks, to the travails of repulsing an attack by goblins on Cliff House. Every story reflects the wonder and joy of Christmas and is a testament to a father's hand crafted love for his children.

Go to previous Book Blogger Hop: There Are 26 Spacetime Dimensions in Bosonic String Theory

Go to subsequent Book Blogger Hop: Esperanto Has Twenty-Eight Letters in It's Alphabet

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