J.R.R. Tolkien’s Long-Lost Christmas Poem

A discovery of Tolkien’s poem brought to light a lovely Christmas meditation. Unlike most of Tolkien’s works, it’s explicitly Christian.

The bells of Christmas echo in J.R.R. Tolkien's poem. Public Domain

In early 2013, fans of the epic fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien received exciting news: Two previously lost poems by the Oxford don had been discovered in an obscure, 1936 school journal. Given Tolkien’s love of old maps and manuscripts, it’s fitting that his poem was uncovered by two Tolkien scholars, Wayne Hammond and Christina Scull, a couple who were searching through old archives.

Literary Detectives

The pair encountered a reference in a Feb. 15, 1936 issue of “The Tablet” to “a poem or two” by Tolkien being published in a periodical called variously the “Abingdon Annual” and “Abingdon Chronicle.” Furthermore, there was a reference in Tolkien’s own papers to the publication of a poem in the “Abingdon Chronicle.”

Using some detective work, Hammond and Scull determined that the “Abingdon Annual” or “Abingdon Chronicle” was really a periodical called “The Annual” published by Our Lady’s School, Abingdon (near Oxford). The literary sleuths contacted the school, which is still running, and asked whether they had the 1936 issue of “The Annual.” They obtained a copy, which included two long-forgotten Tolkien poems: “The Shadow Man”—an earlier version of a poem eventually published as part of a collection in 1962—and a Christmas poem titled “Noel.” 

A school journal might seem an unusual outlet for the work of a distinguished Oxford Professor. But in 1936, Tolkien was still an obscure author. His first notable work, “The Hobbit,” would not appear until the following year. His traditional style of verse made it hard for Tolkien to publish in more notable literary journals, which were preoccupied with the stylish literary modernism of the period. It’s possible that Tolkien knew some of the staff at the school, making it an obvious place to publish.

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Whatever the case, we’re lucky to have recovered the lovely little Christmas meditation “Noel.” Unlike most of Tolkien’s body of work, this poem is explicitly Christian. Tolkien’s Catholic faith informed all his literary work, but here that influence is unmistakable and direct. Even so, the poem’s setting and imagery make it at home with Tolkien’s Middle-earth fantasy work.

As the blog “The Tolkien Road” points out, “While there’s no direct connection to the legendarium of Middle-earth [in the poem], there are a number of thematic and symbolic connections. Even the villainous title ‘lord of snows’ recalls the infamous Sauron (the ‘Lord of the Rings’).”

The poem includes reference to a sword, wilderness paths, and a great hall—all of which are reminiscent of elements of the Middle-earth narratives.

This illustration by H.R. Millar from a 1903 book "The One Strand River, and Other Fairy Tales" indicates the level of artistry encouraged in these typically child-focused books. Tolkien believed that fairy tales were an integral part of a well-rounded person's literary knowledge. Public Domain

“The Tolkien Road” also notes that this poem gives literary expression to an idea Tolkien outlined in his essay “On Fairy Stories” and explored in the Middle-earth novels. In that essay, “Tolkien coined the term ‘Eucatastroph’ as a key element of worthy fantasy story-telling. The eucatastrophe is the moment when things seem at their darkest and some unexpected twist turns things in a hopeful direction. ... According to Tolkien, the Birth of Christ is the great eucatastrophe of human history, the moment when things seemed at their darkest, and God acted in a mighty and unexpected way to bring new hope into the world.”

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This progression from despair to sudden hope is clear from the poem’s structure, which moves from dark, cold, silent, bleak imagery at the beginning to bright, hopeful, light-and-music-filled imagery later on. The moment of greatest despair suddenly becomes the moment of greatest hope.

Anglo-Saxon Ancestry

Tolkien writes in ballad measure, a type of verse traditionally associated with stories and narratives. This reflects the fact that Tolkien viewed Christmas as a central narrative in the story of the cosmos. Drawing from the Old English tradition, Tolkien uses alliteration heavily in “Noel.” Take a look at the opening of the work, and notice how certain sounds echo within a given line:

Grim was the world and grey last night: The moon and stars were fled, The hall was dark without song or light, The fires were fallen dead. The wind in the trees was like to the sea. 

The alliterative “s” sounds in the last line mimic the sound of the hissing and sighing wind it describes. This helps create the cold and bleak atmosphere of the first stanza. But following the pattern of the eucatastrophe, even the first stanza doesn’t end without some note of hope:

And over the mountains’ teeth It whistled bitter-cold and free, As a sword leapt from its sheath.

Given the context of the poem and Tolkien’s other writings, the sword likely carries positive connotations. It suggests the idea of heroic resistance to the onslaught of evil and darkness. The importance of the sword as symbol of hope can be seen in a poem about the character Aragorn in the novel “Fellowship of the Ring.” It runs, in part, “From the ashes a fire shall be woken/ a light from the shadows shall spring/ Renewed shall be blade that was broken/ The crownless again shall be king.” The reforging and emergence of the blade marks the return of the true king and the defeat of evil. The parallels to Christmas are obvious here.

A 1940s-era colorized photo of Tolkien. TuckerFTW/CC BY-SA 4.0

The second stanza of the poem, continuing with the galloping ballad meter, follows much the same pattern as the first: a bleak, wintry landscape is evoked using vivid descriptive language. But at the very close of the stanza, a sudden hope flashes into the narrative:

The world was blind, the boughs were bent, All ways and paths were wild: Then the veil of cloud apart was rent, And here was born a Child.

This stanza marks a shift in the poem, as Tolkien begins to emphasize more hopeful images and sounds like distant light, a star, the bells of Heaven and Earth, and a sudden voice heard singing. That voice is Mary’s:

Mary sang in this world below: They heard her song arise O’er mist and over mountain snow To the walls of Paradise.

Mary’s singing—a symbol of her peace, joy, and love for God—rises above the evil symbolized by the cold, dark, and snow. It rises all the way to Heaven, and sets the heavenly bells ringing. Mary’s song, first appearing about halfway through the poem, begins to permeate the rest of the verses, infusing them with growing light and gladness. The dark, bleak, wintry image fades away more and more, giving place to warmth, light, and Christmas cheer. The final stanza stands as a mirror opposite to the first:

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.

While at the beginning of the poem the world was grim, now it is glad. Where before the hall was cold and silent, now it’s filled with laughter and light and a roaring, cheering fire. The repetition of “Gloria” resounds like the “bells of Christendom” and expresses something of the exuberant spirit of Christmas joy. A heart so filled with joy and lost in amazement stutters over its words: Gloria, Gloria!

The warm light from a country church cascades into the fog, on Christmas Eve in Old Rattray, Scotland. Mike Pennington/CC BY-SA 2.0

In this magical little work, Tolkien crafted an inspiring poem that captures the renewal, rebirth, and unexpected hope of Christmas. At the same time, the atmospheric setting of the poem reminds us of the fantasy landscapes of his other works. In both this poem and his larger oeuvre, Tolkien paints for us an other-world that is somehow also this world.

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