The Stories We Come Home To

Maxine Davey returns home for winter break, and to the stories that shape our childhood holiday memories, in a new deep dive into the LARB archive.

By Maxine DaveyDecember 26, 2024

As the LARB staff heads home for the holidays, Maxine Davey discovers J. R. R. Tolkien’s relationship to Christmas in Nick Owchar’s 2021 roundup.

To travel home for the holidays is to find things different, but also the same. There’s a stack of my sister’s stuff on the desk in my childhood bedroom; the tree, decorated without me, bursts with sentimental ornaments. I’ll play a soccer game at my high school stadium in a few days, but this time I’ll be on the alumni team. When I come back here, I often turn to children’s literature—both the holiday tales that have been in my family for generations and the fantasy worlds that might not come to mind as traditionally “Christmassy”—to restore and remind me of some of the magic that has been lost in the years I’ve been away.

Nick Owchar’s 2021 essay “Making Room for Santa in Tolkien’s Legendarium” captures the holiday magic of J. R. R. Tolkien’s collected works. Owchar writes that “No other season seems more suited for reading about the struggles of Middle-earth than the gloomy, wintry months of the year.” It’s an idea publishers and filmmakers seem to agree with. Owchar notes Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s trend of publishing new Tolkien works “seemingly every fall,” while the new anime film, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim just hit theaters this month. Owchar highlights Letters from Father Christmas (2020)—a collection of letters written from Tolkien/Santa to his children, edited by daughter-in-law Baillie Tolkien—and even speculates on a theory connecting “the Istari, Gandalf’s wizardly brethren,” to Santa himself. You’ll have to read his piece for an elaboration on that lore.

Owchar’s piece made me realize that my return to children’s literature over the holidays lets those stories acquire a holiday magic regardless of their subject matter. One of the first things I do when I get home is rifle through our collection of Christmas books that my mom continues to set out every year, even though the youngest person in our household is 16. But even those that aren’t fundamentally “Christmas stories,” like Lord of the Rings, evoke holiday joy and nostalgia.

Every Harry Potter book, for example, dedicates time to Christmas. Faithful fans might recall a toothpick, a golden chain with the word “sweetheart,” inedible rock cakes, handmade sweaters, and maggots as just a few of the idiosyncratic gifts received by Harry and his gang, capturing the magic of waking up on Christmas morning. The series also explores the bittersweet aspects of the holiday: in The Deathly Hallows (2007), Harry and Hermione, on the run and visiting Harry’s childhood home and parents’ gravesite, are taken aback when they hear a choir while outside a church and realize that it is Christmas Eve.

Grief is particularly difficult during the holiday season. The feeling of loss—of youth, innocence, friends, and family—can return in full force, especially for those traveling home after being away or experiencing their first December without a loved one. Yet the books we’ve read since childhood offer both escape and reflection, allowing us to process difficult emotions alongside beloved characters. When I pick up Tolkien, or Rowling, or our family’s well-loved copy of Santa Mouse (1966), I am reminded that the magic of the holidays lives in the stories that have shaped us, comforted us, and continue to guide us through the complexities of growing up.