Father Christmas

Product Information

You are welcome to bring your own camera to take photos of your special memories. Please note that any photos can only be for personal use and not commercial use. No filming is allowed inside The Santa’s Grotto. There will also be an opportunity to buy additional photos from our photo booth. I was four years old when my family first moved from Hong Kong to Britain in the 90s. Not knowing much English at first made everything difficult, but I was introduced to the world of Raymond Briggs via The Snowman one Christmas, a story that requires no words. Walking through his 150ft magical grotto will be open for everyone to enjoy all the beautiful scenes

Activities on offer will include interacting with father Christmas and his busy elves where all the good boys and girls will receive a quality gift

Great Grottos process the data on behalf of Derbion. Great Grottos only shares your data with Derbion and no one else. Father Christmas has awoken from a dream of summer sun to discover it is December 24th, Christmas Eve - the start of his longest night's work of the year! Much merriment ensues as Father Christmas travels the world, with a few issues along the way, to bring joy to children everywhere. Growing up, my belief in Santa was pretty strong, most of the homes in my neighborhood contained children, some with two, some with four children, most with three, but Santa came to our home with a giant red leather-bound book, in which he had stories of things we’d done throughout the year written down, so when it was our turn to sit on his lap, we often were cautioned about things we’d done wrong and congratulated for things we’d done right. Since this was a neighborhood ritual, we all gathered at one house and patiently waited our turn. Santa was the same from year to year, with a real beard and no stuffing needed, and his “suit” was clearly his own, nothing new about it. He was, as we all knew, the real deal. Raymond Briggs is one of my key inspirations, his breathlessly sweet Ethel & Ernest totally captured me as a young reader. I was haunted by it for decades, telling the story of his parents’ relationship, from its beginning to their deaths. It’s a wonderful ball of everything he did so beautifully: empathic, funny, existentially terrifying.

A wonderful collection that spreads the Christmas cheer and is a real eye-catcher if you have the print edition. The perfect read for anyone enjoying the holidays and delighting in tales of mischief and the right kind of spirit for this time of year.From the annals of one of the 20th century’s greatest writers of fantasy comes this collection of letters, perfect for the holiday season. A collection of letters written by Nicholas Christmas to the Tolkien children, this book is filled with the Christmas spirit and all the lovely stories that take place each year at the North Pole. The letters, penned in the 1920s and 30s, introduce the children to North Polar Bear and his helpful role as Father Christmas’ assistant in the preparation for the great Christmas delivery. Annual letters talk about wandering reindeer, small polar cubs, as well as the warm weather and fiscal belt-tightening required, which serve to entertain and educate the Tolkiens. As the years progress, the recipients change, though Father Christmas is sure to remember those older Tolkiens who may choose no longer to write. Making loose references to letters written and sent to him, Father Christmas adds a secondary gift with most letters, a hand-drawn picture in ink, depicting some of the key events mentioned in the text. This wonderful set of letters is sure to make any lover of Christmas feel a little warmer during the holiday season. Fans of Christmas will enjoy this short piece, as well as those who love Tolkien’s unique style. Le Père Martin" (1888) by Ruben Saillens and unwittingly plagiarized as " Papa Panov's Special Christmas" by Leo Tolstoy

Great Grottos retain your data for up to 10 months. At the end of that retention period, your data will be deleted completely. Derbion review our retention periods for personal information on a regular basis. We are legally required to hold some types of information to fulfil our statutory obligations. We will hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the relevant activity, as long as is set out in any relevant contract you hold with usor as long as we are required to do so by our statutory obligations. Un libro che raccoglie tante lettere a partire dal 1920 dal figlio maggiore, all’ultima lettera del 1943 rivolta all’ultima figlia di Tolkien. Ogni letterina presente nel libro è accompagnata dalla lettera vera e propria e da tantissime illustrazioni meravigliose, disegni che riempiono il cuore.We have today heard from Father Christmas, and his Elves that they will be arriving at the Reindeer Centre ‪on the 18th November to spread some much needed Christmas spirit and to meet all the good boys and girls We reserve the right to ask guests to leave if we believe their behaviour is adversely affecting the pleasure of our other guests. When I started reading this, I was charmed with this illustrations and the idea of J.R.R. Tolkien even writing just these letters to his children, and then when I began reading this, I realized what a treasure this was, and I wished I had thought of doing something similar for my own children… and then I realized how it would pale in comparison to these letters, the stories they hold in them from Father Christmas to his children through the years.

Raymond Briggs, creator of The Snowman, introduces us to a rather grumpy Father Christmas in this brilliantly tongue-in-cheek festive tale. Briggs was a visual storyteller, in the truest sense. People tend to forget that The Snowman was a wordless book, and that’s because the story that the images convey is so vivid. That is a very hard thing to pull off, but Briggs made it look easy. Which is, of course, what geniuses do. Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.

Christmas Grotto

You can’t just add a character halfway through a story” said a friend of the family when I showed them one of my first story attempts as a child. I had studiously traced a spread from Briggs’s Fungus the Bogeyman and was trying to insert my own words to accompany his brilliant illustrations. The comment from the family friend has stayed with me as an unintended guide to writing, to keep the audience in the know, to lead them by the hand. Almost every November or December from 1920 to 1943 one or several letters would arrive for J.R.R. Tolkien’s children. In strange spidery handwriting Father Christmas would tell them about life at the North Pole. Those tales were accompanied by color drawings and sometimes also by additional notes written by the North Polar Bear and later also by Father Christmas’ secretary, an Elf named Ilbereth.