Beyond the Bible and Seuss’s Grinch, check out –

Letters from Father Christmas: a collection made up of the letters that Santa wrote to Tolkein’s family seasonally for over two decades. Each year a different problem occurred at the North Pole, including some whoopsies from a bumbling Polar Bear who lives with St. Nick and a few invasions by goblins (this predates Middle Earth, but I’d bet that some development was done during the creation of the letters, including a spiffy language key in the back which was sent to Tolkein’s children so that they could help decipher goblin cave writings).

The artwork and writing is so nifty and clever… The favorite edition being the one which has pages that are actually envelopes, from which you take out beautifully reproduced letters to read, Griffin and Sabine style. However, one of the newer editions (the oversized 1999 Revised edition) includes many additional years’ worth of letters that the special edition does not and is really quite comprehensive.

My first encounter with the book was working in charge of kids’ books in the early 90s. I have a lot of fond memories doing story hour, and wish that the letters could’ve been implemented over the course of the two weeks leading up to the holiday…two letters a session would’ve been perfect. Unfortunately, it was not to be… I’d still like to read them with my sweetheart sometime… I think she’d really dig ’em.