Which Tolkien work was published in 1976 as a collection of letters from Father Christmas?

The Father Christmas Letters was the Tolkien work published in 1976 as a collection of letters from Father Christmas.

The book gathers letters and illustrated materials Tolkien created for his children between 1920 and 1943. In these messages, he wrote in the voice of Father Christmas and developed recurring characters, including the North Polar Bear. The letters describe comic mishaps, polar adventures, battles, and life at the North Pole.

The project began when Tolkien’s oldest child, John, was three years old. Tolkien continued the tradition for his other children, often changing handwriting, creating drawings, and inventing fictional documents to make the correspondence feel authentic. The result combines family history with the imaginative techniques visible in his major literature.

The book is sometimes confused with The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, an edited selection of Tolkien’s real correspondence published later. The Father Christmas Letters is a designed children’s collection, not a general biography or a record of Tolkien’s professional letters.