Now that we have officially entered the Christmas season in the U.S.A., what could be more festive than a claymation special starring Gollum and the Hobbit gang. Christmas in Middle-Earth is the wickedly charming musical brainchild of actor/musicians Brendan Dalton. Dalton used his free time during the lonely days of pandemic life to compose an album’s worth of Tolkien-inspired Christmas jams. As he explains on his website:

Christmas in Middle-Earth, the brainchild of 8 years worth of Tolkien fanaticism, was the result of a drunken joke that just never ended. “What if they celebrated Christmas in the Shire and sang drinking songs about it in the Green Dragon? What if we wrote one? Wouldn’t that be hilarious?” It wasn’t, but we did it anyway. And thus, an unhinged bit was born that went on for way too long. 8 years to be exact.

It began as a sporadic release of demos – because who needs regular album drops anyway? Then came an epic plot twist: 2020’s quarantine united our fictional band to ‘fix, remix, and remaster’ the entire album. It’s like ‘The Two Towers,’ but with mixing boards instead of towers! …too far?