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A few years ago, my family watched the entire Lord of the Rings film trilogy over Christmas break (extended editions, OF COURSE).
It was great, and to my delight, it left a deep impression on my kids.
It just felt like perfect Christmas viewing.
Which is odd, because The Lord of the Rings has nothing to do with Christmas…
OR DOES IT?
While The Lord of the Rings is certainly NOT a Christmas story in any straightforward sense (Legolas ain’t one of Santa’s Elves), a deep dive into the writings of Tolkien yields a profound and surprising connection between Lord of the Rings and Christmas.
December 25th: The Fellowship Leaves Rivendell
Let’s start off with something very basic: Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn, and the rest of the Fellowship leave Rivendell at dusk on December 25th, which in later ages would be known as Christmas.
Now, this doesn’t mean much by itself. After all, lots of things happen in our world on December 25th that don’t have anything to do with Christmas as such.
However, tucked away in The Lord of the Rings Reader’s Companion is this startling admission from Tolkien:
“Dec. 25 (setting out) and March 25 (accomplishment of quest) were intentionally chosen by me.”
So why would Tolkien choose these dates “intentionally”?
March 25th: Destruction of the One Ring
Sauron’s Ring is destroyed on March 25th, accomplishing the quest of Frodo, and bringing the Dark Lord’s power and tyranny to an end.
Now why is the date March 25th so important that Tolkien would deliberately choose it for The Lord of the Rings’ climax?
March 25th is celebrated by many Christians, including Roman Catholics like Tolkien, as the Feast of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary.
When Mary consents to God’s plan for her, she is overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and conceives the Christ Child.
This event is known in Christian theology as the Incarnation, when the Son of God became Man.
Add 9 months to March 25th, and you get December 25th, Christmas Day, when Christians commemorate the birth of Christ.
The Happy Catastrophe
So this is where we begin to make the deep connection between The Lord of the Rings and Christmas.
One of the key ideas of Tolkien’s literary theory was that of Eucatastrophe (said like “You Catastrophe”) which has to do with the sudden happy turn in a story. Tolkien felt this to be one of the key marks of good fantasy.
And he felt it was key to understanding human history as well.
In fact, in his landmark work On Fairy-stories, he said:
“The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history.”
Literally, Tolkien viewed human history as an epic story, with the Birth of Christ being the great, happy turn away from the disaster of evil, sin, and death.
Thus, it’s as if Tolkien wanted to make a subtle yet impactful connection between his own epic tale and the history of mankind, and in doing so, connected the destruction of Sauron’s Ring to Christmas itself.
Yet still, the connection goes even deeper.
The Coming of Christ Foreseen In Middle-earth
In the Middle-earth story Athrabeth Finrod ah Andreth, which takes place thousands of years before The Lord of the Rings, the immortal elf Finrod and the mortal woman Andreth discuss the nature of life and death.
At one point, Andreth makes this startling assertion about an ancient Hope:
“They say that the One will himself enter into Arda, and heal Men and all the Marring from the beginning to the end.”
Thus, in the Middle-earth legendarium, the Incarnation, the great Eucatastrophe of man’s history, is foreseen!
Everything Sad Will Come Untrue
So while The Lord of the Rings may not be a “Christmas story” per se, it has a very deep connection to Christmas as the beginning of Christ’s victory over evil, sin, and death, so much so that Tolkien seems to have felt it necessary to plant little “nods for the knowing” within the story’s plot.
Of course, this all goes hand in hand with Tolkien’s startling admission:
“The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work, unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision.” – Letter 142
To borrow a phrase from Samwise Gamgee, because of the Christ Child, everything sad will indeed come untrue.
