A Toast to the Professor

 If The Professor, J. R. R. Tolkien himself, was a long lived as his hobbits, today would be his 129th birthday. I celebrated by hosting a chicken dinner for my family, followed by a nice, nutty cake (the family's contribution to the feast) and tea. Followed by... well, my sister's ultimate cut of the Hobbit movies. Now, it should be made clear that I am not a fan of the Hobbit movies. I watched the first, and did not hate it. Indeed, the scene where the dwarves all starting singing the Misty Mountain song still seems to me to be a very good and inspiring scene. I watched the second, was disappointed by it, and disgusted with the stupid Kili and Tauriel thing. For a good long while, I did not bother with the last, having no desire to watch the Professor's delightful story to be increasingly ransacked, nor the well cast Bilbo be a side character in his own movies. When I finally did watch it, I fully expected it to be a disappointment.... but somehow, it managed to disappoint even more than I thought it would-- quite a feat, that. However, my sister manage to take the bloated bores that those three movies were, ruthlessly eliminate all the dead weight (No Tauriel at all, no White Orc, no weird side story with Gandalf, the Elves and the Necromancer, a bare minimum of strange elves defying physics.) while also adding back in scenes from the extended edition-- notably, allowing Beorn to actually be a character-- and the result was a surprisingly watchable 3 hour movie. We paused it at 9 pm, so that we could lift our glasses of Good Drink, and in unison toast, "To the Professor" quite heartily, which was ridiculously good fun. Throw in the fact that we were able to have Mass today, and you have a perfect Tolkien Birthday.

In honour of the good Professor, and this blessed season in which he was born, I am posting a song that I am ridiculously pleased to have found. There is a bit of a story as to how I came across it: to whit I got an odd notion that perhaps Earendel/Earendil, brightest of stars, may have been given the task of guiding the Wisemen to find our Lord in Bethlehem. I sort of wondered if anyone else had had that idea, and if there mightn't be a picture of it. Though, alas, pictures were not to be had, apparently, the Right Reverend Charles William Stubbs did indeed have the same idea I did, but he got it before Tolkien even came up with his own brightest of stars. The Right Reverend Charles William Stubbs wrote a poem, called The Carol of the Star, in which he explicitly identifies the Christmas Star as Earendel. The invaluable Hymns and Carols of Christmas has this posted on their website, along with sheet music to the music it was later set to. Nothing for it, of course, but to try to find a recording.... which I did eventual, but only after I abandoned poor Reverend Stubbs in my searching, and stuck entirely to the composer, T. Tertius Noble. And lo and behold, here is a Christmas carol, in which we sing "Hail Earendel!" as the refrain: