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Tolkien’s Father Christmas: When Imagination Became Incarnation · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast, I'm Jordan.
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  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode,
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  SPEAKER_00: we're going to look at Tolkien's Father Christmas,
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  SPEAKER_00: When Imagination Became Incarnation.
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  every december in a small house on northmore road in oxford j r
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  r tolkien sat at
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  his desk while the rest of the world knew him as a professor
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  and creator of middle
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  earth to his children he was father christmas each year for
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  over two decades
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  letters would arrive in the mail addressed in spidery
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  handwriting from the north
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  SPEAKER_00: pole
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  SPEAKER_00: They were written in shimmering ink,
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  SPEAKER_00: illustrated with polar bears,
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  SPEAKER_00: snowmen,
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  SPEAKER_00: and moonlight battles against goblins.
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  But hidden beneath the magic was something far deeper,
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  a theology of imagination.
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  SPEAKER_00: Because for Tolkien, fantasy was never about escape.
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  it was about truth disguised as wonder a way to express the
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  mystery of a god who
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  became flesh the year was nineteen twenty europe was still
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  recovering from the
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  great war tolkien now a young father had lost friends in the
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  trenches and carried
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  their ghosts in his heart that christmas his eldest son john
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  received a letter the
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  SPEAKER_00: envelope was edged with frost and stamped north pole
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  inside was a message from father christmas and so began one of
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  the most touching
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  creative rituals in literary history each year new letters
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  arrived they told of
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  battles between goblins and polar bears of lost presents
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  mischievous elves and
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  snow-storms that threaten christmas deliveries but between the
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  lines you could
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  SPEAKER_00: trace tolkien's life his faith his grief his hope
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  as the years passed the letters grew darker war returned this
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  time on a global
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  scale bombs fell on london two of tolkien's sons were sent to
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  the front and from
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  the north pole father christmas began writing not just of toys
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  and snow but of
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  SPEAKER_00: courage endurance and light in the darkness
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  Most people assume Tolkien's imagination was a retreat from the
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  real world,
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  SPEAKER_00: a refuge from the horrors of war.
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  SPEAKER_00: But for him, it wasn't.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was a form of resistance.
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  In 1939,
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  the same year Germany invaded Poland,
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  Tolkien delivered a lecture at St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Andrew's titled On Fairy Stories.
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  SPEAKER_00: In it, he argued that myths are not lies.
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  SPEAKER_00: They are echoes, refractions of a deeper truth.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every time a story makes us long for goodness,
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  SPEAKER_00: every time a tale of light overcomes shadow,
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  SPEAKER_00: we are hearing the faint music of the gospel behind all stories.
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  SPEAKER_00: He coined a word for this, sub-creation.
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  SPEAKER_00: God,
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  SPEAKER_00: Tolkien said,
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  SPEAKER_00: is the primary creator,
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  SPEAKER_00: and when we craft words of our own,
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  SPEAKER_00: we become sub-creators,
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  SPEAKER_00: imitating the divine imagination in miniature.
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  our creativity is an act of worship a reflection of the image
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  of god to create it
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  all is to whisper i believe in a maker who made me to make
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  tolkien despised the
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  modern notion that fantasy was childish he saw fairy stories as
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  the most adult form
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  SPEAKER_00: of art because they reawaken what cynicism tries to kill
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  wonder he wrote to c.s lewis that christianity itself is a myth
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  which is also a
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  fact the one story in which the author enters his own narrative
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  for tolkien the
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  incarnation was not just doctrine it was the prototype of every
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  good story eternal
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  breaks into the temporal the infinite enters the finite the
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  creator steps into
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  SPEAKER_00: creation and redeems it from the inside
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  SPEAKER_00: That's why he called the moment of Christ's birth the eucatastrophe,
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  SPEAKER_00: the good catastrophe,
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  SPEAKER_00: the joyful twist that turns despair into redemption.
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  He wrote,
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  it's a sudden and miraculous grace never to be counted on yet
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  always to be hoped for.
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  And he insisted every story that moves us from fairy tales to
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  epics borrows its
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  SPEAKER_00: power from that single event.
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  so when tolkien wrote his father christmas letters about polar
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  bears battling
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  goblins stars falling from the sky and courage in the cold he
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  wasn't escaping
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  reality he was revealing it he was teaching his children that
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  the world is not
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  SPEAKER_00: random or meaningless it is enchanted by grace
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  and even in a house blacked out for the air raids he wanted
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  them to believe what he
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  called the great christian fairy story that the light shines in
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  the darkness and
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  the darkness cannot overcome it tolkien never preached in his
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  father christmas
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  SPEAKER_00: letters he didn't need to
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  SPEAKER_00: Theology was woven into the world itself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Father Christmas is not omnipotent.
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  SPEAKER_00: He grows weary, fights evil, forgets things.
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  SPEAKER_00: He is a figure of grace inside a fallen world,
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  SPEAKER_00: powerful yet vulnerable,
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  SPEAKER_00: like the Christ child himself.
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  SPEAKER_00: And the North Pole wasn't heaven.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was the borderland between wonder and weariness.
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  It was like a little parable of faith,
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  where joy costs something and goodness still bleeds.
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  SPEAKER_00: By the final letters in the 1940s, Tolkien's children were grown,
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  and the world was once again at war the handwriting had grown
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  shaky the stories
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  were shorter but even then father christmas signed each one the
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  same way with love
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  from father christmas it wasn't just a farewell to his children
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  it was a quiet
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  SPEAKER_00: benediction to a world that had forgotten how to believe
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  SPEAKER_00: Tolkien believed imagination wasn't the opposite of reality,
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  SPEAKER_00: but the seedbed of faith,
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  SPEAKER_00: because every time a story stirs our longing for beauty,
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  SPEAKER_00: it's awakening something ancient in us,
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  SPEAKER_00: the echo of Eden and the promise of Bethlehem.
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  That's why,
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  in a sense,
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  Father Christmas was Tolkien's rehearsal for The Lord of the
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  Rings.
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  Both stories share the same heartbeat,
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  that evil may rage,
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  goodness endures.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hope is never lost, only hidden.
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  And the smallest lights,
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  even the candle in the dark,
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  can still defy the shadow.
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  SPEAKER_00: And that's Advent's theology, disguised in snow and ink.
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  Because the miracle of the Incarnation isn't that God stepped
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  into a perfect world,
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  SPEAKER_00: but that he chose to step into ours.
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  SPEAKER_00: The imagination of Tolkien's Father Christmas was not fantasy.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was faith translated for children.
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  SPEAKER_00: So as you wrap the final gifts or sit by the fire this Christmas,
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  SPEAKER_00: remember that our stories,
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  SPEAKER_00: even the make-believe ones,
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  SPEAKER_00: are never wasted.
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  SPEAKER_00: Every tale of light piercing darkness,
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  SPEAKER_00: every whisper of joy after sorrow,
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  SPEAKER_00: every Father Christmas letter written in love,
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  they all point towards the truest story of all,
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  that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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  SPEAKER_00: The storyteller's greatest act is not invention.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's participation,
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  joining the author of all things and telling the story of
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  redemption through
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  SPEAKER_00: beauty,
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  SPEAKER_00: wonder,
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  SPEAKER_00: and grace.
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  Hey,
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  if this episode stirred your imagination,
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  share it with a friend this Christmas.
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  SPEAKER_00: And from all of us at Theology Made, Merry Christmas.