A very merry Yule to everyone! I hope yer all have some relaxing days, filled with as much good cheer as possible. To help yer get in the right mood, here is this year’s Yule video from the Shire hobbits on Meriadoc.
Enjoy! And if this isn’t enough, be sure to check out the hobbity Yule calendar! Or attend one of the hobbit yule events!
The 2025 Yule video
Every year since 2012, I have made Yule videos where the hobbit players on the LOTRO Laurelin server are invited to take part. And they have! Lots have attended the video shoots, sent in screenshots, and offered ideas for scenes. So naturally, when Laurelin closed this year and most of the local hobbits went to Meriadoc, the tradition had to continue.
Many thanks to all who helped this year! As always, yer assistance and good cheer was absolutely vital for the making of this video! I really hope I didn’t forget to add any of the pictures yer sent in…
If you think this all looks fun, please join us! There are lots of things happening in the Shire, which yer can read about in my own hobbit calendar or in the Bramblebury Gazette, the local hobbit newspaper.
So here it is: The 2025 Meriadoc hobbit Yule video. Full-screen and high-definition very much recommended! More on the making-of it below.
The Bathing
The hobbit Yule videos have grown in length over the years. While most have been around seven to eight minutes, last year's went on for twelve and a half. This year's clocked in just shy of twelve.
There are several reasons for this. I have easier access to more music, allowing more tracks in each video. The stories in recent videos are more involved (perhaps even convoluted), with intro and end segments, needing a bit more time. And where I in earlier years was more ruthless about cutting scenes, I now use more footage. Perhaps this bloats the videos a bit, but it is also good fun to allow everyone involved more screen time. At least, I haven't developed full-blown Jacksonitis when it comes to hobbit videos yet...
As always, the trickiest part is to find stories to tell. In recent years, I've based the videos on initial ideas by Pycella, and then developed the story during scripting and shooting. The main segment this year was based on a throwaway comment from last Yule, when we discussed possible ideas for future videos. Many of the local hobbit roleplayers have a somewhat strained relationship with bathing, no doubt inspired by being properly scrubbed by their strict parents when younger. Hence, The Bathing, a hobbit horror story of all things washing and splashing. It didn't hurt that the movie version of The Shining celebrates its 45th anniversary this year.
So, off to the Overtook Hotel we went, for lots of moist madness, many a horror cliche and several scenes inspired from the movie. It was good fun to shoot, although many poor hobbits got dizzy after I made them run around inside the ice maze for a while. The Bathing segment also has one obvious continuity error, which works out well anyway, since it feeds into the uncertainty of what is going on. The torch effects inside the ice maze were not pre-planned, but one of the lucky things that sometimes happens during shooting. One hobbit lit up their torch, then others followed, and that made for a nice ghostly glow within the icy walls.
The second segment, The Yule Snow Heist, was a simpler affair based on the fact that in LOTRO, it never really snows in the Shire. So pity the poor hobbit who wishes for snow for Yule. Or their friends who set out to make it happen, bringing in snow from nearby dwarven lands. This segment also contains perhaps the most popular scene ever among Yule video participants, when they were allowed to throw snowballs at me for minutes. The things I do for art...
The end credits mixes scenes from a Yule party with all the screenshots that others sent in for the video. It uses a long-time favourite song, Auld Lang Syne, which is traditionally sung on New Year's Eve to bid farewell to the old year. I figured this was a fitting song to end this year's video. 2025 has been an uncertain year for LOTRO players, with server closures, lots of technological issues, transfer woes and more. What better than to wave goodbye to the year that was and hope for better in the new? One can hope, anyway!
Happy hobbity Yule everyone! And thanks again to all who helped make the video possible! Pycella has already started offering ideas for future shoots, so all going well, there are more videos to come!
More videos
Want to see the previous hobbit Yule videos? Here’s a playlist with all of them, from 2012 onwards! I think you’ll find they have changed a bit over the years, both storywise and technically.