Hobbit Day

What the day is

Hobbit Day is observed on September 22, the birthday that Bilbo and Frodo Baggins share in The Lord of the Rings. It is the anchor of Tolkien Week, and it is celebrated the way hobbits would prefer: with food, drink, and no particular ceremony.

The date matters inside the story as well. Bilbo's farewell party, the one that opens the book and ends with him vanishing mid-speech, takes place on that birthday, and the plot proper begins from there. Readers marking the day are marking the moment the ring leaves Bag End.

Origin and background

The observance is credited to the American Tolkien Society, which has promoted Hobbit Day and the surrounding Tolkien Week since the late 1970s. It spread through fan clubs, bookshops and university societies long before the films, and expanded considerably after them.

There is a long-running quibble about the date. Tolkien's Shire Calendar does not map cleanly onto the Gregorian one, and by some reckonings the birthday falls nearer September 12 or 14. The September 22 convention has held anyway, on the reasonable grounds that it is the date printed in the book and the one everybody can remember.

How to take part

Hobbit celebrations are mostly culinary, which makes this an unusually easy day to observe well.

• Eat the meals. Hobbits keep to breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. Attempting all seven is the traditional joke and a genuinely enjoyable exercise.
• Favor the right food: seed cake, mushrooms, bread and butter, cold chicken, pickles, ale. Nothing elaborate, plenty of it.
• Read the opening chapter aloud. "A Long-expected Party" takes about half an hour and was written to be read that way.
• Give presents rather than receive them, as Bilbo does. Hobbits hand out gifts on their own birthdays.
• Go outside and walk. A long walk ending at a pub is entirely in keeping.

If you have never read the books, the day is a decent excuse to start. If you have read them many times, it is the standard excuse to start again.