Tolkien and Christmas (2/2)
Of Yule, Wreaths, Dates and Poetry
In the first part of this post, I explored some of the deeper theological connections between Christmas and Tolkien’s thought, particularly through the concepts of eucatastrophe and subcreation. Now I would like to look at three other elements related to Christmas that can be found in The Lord of the Rings. These are the festival of Yule, the etymological link between “wreath” and “wraith” and the symbolic importance of December 25th as the day when the Fellowship of the Ring departed Rivendell to begin its journey to Mordor.
Yule
Among the peoples of the North in Middle-earth, the last day of the year and the first day of the next were called first Yule and second Yule. Together they were celebrated as a midwinter festival. In the calendar reckoning of the Shire, the two days prior to and following the two days of Yule were also incorporated into a six-day Yuletide festival. Men of the North, including those in Rohan whose ancestors originally lived in northern Rhovanion and those in Gondor who by the time of the War of the Ring were largely made up of Northmen intermixed with the heirs of Numenor, also called this festival Yule and celebrated it with a festival. Tolkien records the struggles of the men of the Hornburg, led by Helm Hammerhand, during the invasion of Rohan by Wulf the Dunlending; due to scarcity caused by the Long Winter, both the Rohirrim and their Dunlending occupiers suffered, and “[i]n Helm’s Deep there was a great hunger after Yule”.[1] He also mentions that the Beornings celebrated Yule: as Bilbo returned home with Gandalf from the Battle of the Five Armies, they joined Beorn and his Northmen during their Yuletide festivities before continuing on to the Shire.[2]
Tolkien does not describe Yule and its traditions in depth, but he does reference the feasting which is commonly associated with it today. After Saruman, aka Sharkey, and his minions were defeated following the Scouring of the Shire and the hobbits got to work on rebuilding, “[g]reat stores of goods and food, and beer, were found that had been hidden away by the ruffians in sheds and barns and deserted holes, and especially in the tunnels at Michel Delving and in the old quarries at Scary; so that there was a great deal better cheer that Yule than anyone had hoped for.”[3] From this it can be gleaned that the Yule customs of gift-giving and feasting were common elements of Yuletide festivities in Middle-earth.
Since Middle-earth is a pre-Christian world, as Tolkien explained, there are no explicit references to Christian traditions like Christmas, just as there are few religious practices in general other than the devil worship of the corrupted Númenóreans and the men of Rhûn and Harad. Middle-earth is a secondary world, a fantasy of Tolkien’s sub-creative art; as such, it has the ability to visualize spiritual realities, including angels like the Istari and demons like Sauron and the Balrog, which are ordinarily invisible to us. Instead of religious imagery and sacramental expression, spiritual mysteries are shown visibly and, as Tolkien explained, “the religious element is absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”[4] This is especially important because Middle-earth is pre-Christian: he made sure to avoid promoting any kind of pagan religion as a legitimate alternative to Christianity. Nevertheless, as Catholics have done throughout history, Tolkien incorporated, inculturated and sanctified elements of pre-Christian culture into his world, purifying them of false or immoral elements and orienting them toward Christ. Though he could not do this explicitly, he included Yule and similar elements, such as Faramir’s prayer to the West and the hymn to Elbereth, as examples of the longing of pre-Christian peoples for the fulfillment of all desire in Christ. And though he was averse to allegory, he allowed for analogy and symbolism and appreciated the “derivation” drawn between Galadriel and the Blessed Virgin Mary and between waybread (lembas) and the Eucharist as viaticum. As he wrote, “That is: far greater things may colour the mind in dealing with the lesser things of a fairy-story.”[5]
Wreath
One of the most popular and well-known customs related to Christmas is the wreath, including the Advent wreath whose four candles are lighted for each week of Advent and Christmas wreaths hung on the doors of homes and other buildings. These are often interpreted as signs of the supposed “pagan roots” of Christmas, but in truth, wreaths of flowers or evergreen leaves are universal symbols used by cultures around the world and throughout history. Christians in ancient Rome also took up their use and did so even more frequently than their pagan neighbors. They particularly used wreaths as crowns at baptisms and weddings, a tradition retained in the Greek churches by the use of a silver laurel, and for funerals and processions, as symbols of the Resurrection of Christ which enlivens all Christian celebrations and marks all events of the Christian life with a reminder of the everlasting life won by Christ on the Cross.
Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey drew a connection between “wreath” and Tolkien’s expert linguistic understanding of its many layers of meaning and historic development from its Old English roots. Wraiths play a central role in Tolkien’s stories, particularly The Lord of the Rings, including the Nazgul or Ringwraiths who are enslaved to Sauron and pursue the Fellowship in order to recover the One Ring for their master, as well as the wraiths derived from the necromancy of the Witch-King of Angmar who capture the four hobbits in the Barrow-Downs and are only prevented from turning them into wraiths by the rescue of Tom Bombadil. Shippey explains that the term “wraith” is derived from the Old English verb for “writhe” to mean something that is twisted. It is also related to “wrath/wroth,” meaning angry: to be twisted up inside is to be wreathed in anger, to become a wraith, defined by shape more than substance. Following from this, wraith also connotes immateriality or a spectral nature,[6] as seen by the Ringwraiths who are no more than robed shadows when viewed by natural sight, or the Balrog which Tolkien describes as “like a great shadow” with flames “wreathed about it”.[7] Even Denethor, after his suicidal self-immolation and attempted murder of his son Faramir in despair, is seen “standing there wreathed in fire and smoke”.[8] Within the twisted flames of wrath in all these lost souls is an emptiness of shadow, a void created by their voluntary separation from God.
The Christian wreath and the wreathed wrath of sin are in direct contrast. Like the One Ring of Sauron, whose material form has the conceit of beauty, is seemingly indestructible and is revealed only in flames, yet in its center is a hollow desolation, sin is, despite its glamourous attraction, insubstantial, a mere negation of God with no goodness or substance of its own. For this reason, those who wear the Ring disappear from the world of God and enter the realm of writhing shadows, becoming enslaved to the Shadow who is the lord of sin and death. The Christian wreath, however, is twisted not in anger but in love, in the binding of God to all His creatures in the charitable sacrifice of Christ. Instead of a dark abyss, the center of a Christian wreath is a window to the fire of the Holy Spirit at Advent, to the mind crowned with grace at Baptism and Matrimony and to homes enlightened by the joy of Christmas. This is the reason for one of the titles of the Blessed Virgin: the Untier of Knots. By her Son, she untwists the coils of sin and wraps the world in the loving embrace of God.
December 25th
The dates chosen by Tolkien for the key events of his narratives are not insignificant or random. March 25th, for example, is the day on which the Ring is destroyed – it is also the traditional date of the Annunciation and Good Friday, the days when Christ’s mission on Earth began and when His saving mission was accomplished; this day also marked the end of the Third Age and the beginning of the Fourth in the reckoning of King Elessar, the change of one epoch of time to another, highlighting its deep importance for Tolkien. December 25th is also a turning point in Tolkien’s magnum opus. On this day, the Fellowship of the Ring departed Rivendell to begin its great task.
As I wrote in my first article, Tolkien describes Christmas as a eucatastrophe: “The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy.”[9] It could likewise be said that the departure of the Fellowship is the eucatastrophe of not only the story of the Ring’s arrival in Rivendell, which stood on the edge of a knife and almost ended at the Fords of Isen, but also of the story of the Ring itself, of Sauron and of Morgoth his master, of the earthly dominion of the demonic powers in Middle-earth. All that the Free Peoples had done in history culminated in that date, when the mission of the Fellowship, within which each race and culture of Middle-earth were reconciled through the guidance of the angel Gandalf, to destroy the Ring and banish Sauron from the world would commence. Similarly, all the longings of human history for a Savior, to be united with God and freed from sin and death, began at Christmas, as the eucatastrophe both of human history and the story of the Incarnation of the Son of God which began at the Annunciation.
To show Tolkien’s great love for Christmas, which continues even after the secular world stops celebrating it on December 26th, I would like to include a brief excerpt from a poem he wrote entitled “Noel,” recently discovered by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull:
The ancient dome of heaven sheer
Was pricked with distant light;
A star came shining white and clear
Alone above the night.
In the dale of dark in that hour of birth
One voice on a sudden sang:
Then all the bells in Heaven and Earth
Together at midnight rang.
Mary sang in this world below:
They heard her song arise
O’er mist and over mountain snow
To the walls of Paradise,
And the tongue of many bells was stirred
in Heaven's towers to ring
When the voice of mortal maid was heard,
That was mother of Heaven's King.
Glad is the world and fair this night
With stars about its head,
And the hall is filled with laughter and light,
And fires are burning red.
The bells of Paradise now ring
With bells of Christendom,
And Gloria, Gloria we will sing
That God on earth is come.[10]
(Cover image source: Lída Holubová: https://tolkiengateway.net/w/index.php?curid=60512)
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[1] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Mariner Books, 2004), 1066. Kindle.
[2] J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (Mariner Books, 2012), loc 4311-4320. Kindle.
[3] Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 1022.
[4] J.R.R. Tolkien; Humphrey Carpenter and Christopher Tolkien (eds), The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien (London: HarperCollins, 2012), 172. Kindle.
[5] Tolkien, Letters, 288.
[6] Cf. Tom Shippey, J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), 122-123.
[7] Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 329.
[8] Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, 854.
[9] J.R.R. Tolkien, "On Fairy-Stories," in The Tolkien Reader (Great Britain: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1964), 88-89.
[10] Tolkien Gateway, “Noel,” https://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Noel.
Wonderful! Thank you, Kaleb - and a blessed Christmas to you too!