Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday
 

When do most people celebrate Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday? I think it would be September 23 on the modern calendar.

Are you sure it is not the 21st? That's what I always thought it was.

Burzdol

actually, it's the 22nd of September. right in the middle of your guesses, lol. There was also a large "hippy movement" in England when The Lord Of The Rings was released, and there was a lot of graffiti saying that "FRODO LIVES". some of it's still there today [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] great to walk past it in London.

p.s. Welcome to the barrowdowns Aratharmaion

[ August 21, 2003: Message edited by: Morgoth the Great ]

The date of that joint birthday can be found on the first page of Chapter I in The Lord of the Rings. Surely it wouldn't be too arduous to look it up.

[EDIT] I was, of course, completely ignoring Appendix D to The Lord of the Rings. It's probably worth going into some detail on the matter it covers, since its contents make sense of this thread.

Tolkien 'translated' the Westron names of the various Shire months into those of our own calendar but left the dates unchanged. He says of the correspondance Allowing for the differing lengths of Shire months (and assuming that we're not dealing with a leap year) the correspondance ought to be as follows. Any mistakes in calculating these correspondances are mine.

1 Afteryule = 24 December
1 Solmath = 23 January
1 Rethe = 21 February
1 Astron = 23 March
1 Thrimidge = 22 April
1 Forelithe = 22 May
1 Afterlithe = 23 June (allowing for the two Lithes but not an Overlithe)
1 Wedmath = 23 July
1 Halimath = 22 August
1 Winterfilth = 21 September
1 Blotmath = 21 October
1 Foreyule = 20 November

However, in order for this to be in any way accurate one would have to allow both for our own leap years and the Shire Overlithes, each in their proper places. In the above typical year, though, the Birthday would fall on September the twelfth. I wouldn't be celebrating it then, though, because I only celebrate actual events.

[ August 25, 2003: Message edited by: The Squatter of Amon Rûdh ]

I usuallt celebrate it on September 22, but this year i noticed that the Barrowdown's middle earth date on the main page had their birthday on September 13th

Interesting...so (off topic, sorry) is it 'wrong' to celebrate M-E's new year on 25th March? This gets confusing.
And why does it then say in FotR that the birthday of Bilbo and Frodo was 21st September when it's actually 13th (right?)?

If it says in FotR that their birthday is September 22, wouldn't that be when it is? Why do we need to figure out when it is, if it plainly says it in the book?

Tolkien's use of Septmeber and other months was simply a modernization of the ancient Shire Calendar, which of course would not have had the same month names as us. In fact, they had a different system for dividing their year, which is described quite nicely in Appendice D of the Lord of the Rings.

As Squatter said, our modern 1 Jan would match up with the 9th day of the Shire's first month. Calculating through the year, you get 14 September on regular years and 13 September on Leap Years. (Note: I still had this year set as a leap year until recently, so the site mistaken reported 13 September as the birthday day this year - Sorry. BW)

To somplify things, when JRRT said their birthdays fell on 22 September, he really was saying their birthdays were on the 22nd day of thier 9th month - the 257th day of their year. The 257th day of our year was 14 September.

I hope that clears it up a bit. JRRT took the time to publish Appendice D, so I'm sure he would like us all to understand it.

I just finished re-reading RotK yesterday, and am now slowly working my way through the appendices, so I'll get to that and hopefully understand it this time!

Actually I think the hippy movement began sometime after the books were released, the movement being in the 70s. Correct me if I'm wrong, I wasn't around at the time. [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] And whereabouts in London can I find this graffiti???

As an American, I come from a long tradition of not celebrating things on the days they actually happened. Too inconvenient, yes? Holidays must always fall next to the weekend so as to disrupt the bloody work week as little as possible. I find this irritating in principle, but it is infuriatingly pragmatic. So, I have no problems with celebrating Bilbo and Frodo's birthday on the "wrong" day. The important thing is to celebrate it, and I do--on September 22. Or the 21st, this year, because the 22nd was inconvienent. [img]smilies/rolleyes.gif[/img]

Well, now, today is the 22 of September. And what does that remind me of?
 

Carorëiel, I agree with you. I am 'celebrating' today; much more after the manner of 1418 than Bilbo's 111th, but still.

Cheers.

Pints on me! :D
 

Thanks a lot for the reminder. :)

Happy birthday to our two adventurous hobbits! So...is anybody setting on an overdue quest today? ;)

They are perfoming the LOTR symphony (amamgamated movie music, I believe) in London tonight to celebrate the birthdays......

Why! I didn't even THINK about that. Silly me. And I have the MP3s right here!

They are als playing it tomorrow due to vast demand...

The date sounds the same. I always feel like writing my screen name on MSN as "Happy birthday Bilbo and Frodo". I think that this is easier for even people who are not as Tolkienalised (This word does not appear in the Oxford English dictionary) as some are. Its just nice to say, "Its September the 22nd, that the same as Bilbo and Frodo's birthday! Hurah!" Even if it’s not completely accurate.

Yes, as we speak I have "Happy Birthday Bilbo & Frodo" written on my hand (it's an unfortunate habit I have, writing on my hand) complete with nice Tehtar dots over the a's. After I wrote it I realized that it technically was not the day it "really" would have been, but I soon got over it. Anyway, it was fun to see some people get confused and others go "Oh man! I forgot it was their birthday! Yay!"

So a nice big Happy Birthday, regardless of exact dates, to two of the coolest Hobbits ever. :)

Just saw on theonering.net that today (the 22nd of Sept) is Sala Baker's birthday. . .

brrrrrrrr. . .the only actor to ever play Sauron shares a birthday with Frodo and Bilbo? The Professor, I'm sure, is smiling.

(SB is 28 by the way -- Oh my goodness, just realised that his initials are also shared by that other nemesis of Frodo and Bilbo: the S-B's. . .now I am scared. . .very scared. . .)

Sala Baker's birthday, huh? What an amazing coincidence!

At the meeting of my school's Fantasy Club today, I mentioned it was Frodo and Bilbo's b-day, and we would've had cake in their honor, but I didn't have time to bake one. I'm meeting with some other LotR-freak friends tomorrow as a belated party.

Speaking of LotR holidays: Earlier this year I celebrated May 25th. I baked a yellow bunt cake with the Ring-spell drawn on it in red icing, dressed up as Frodo and made people guess what I was celebrating before I let them get a piece of cake. Most people were able to guess correctly, concidering it was me, the 'crazy elf girl', celebrating it. :D

Now that is Uber-cool. Did you take a picture???

I am watching The Fellowship, having munched an apple, followed by a fluff-frosted brownie ("chocolate Lembas".)

I'm not really doing anything to celebrate, it's just my own quiet recognition. Although my dad thinks I'm officially insane now, because I was discussing over the dinner table how it's their joint birthday, but it's not really the same day, etc, and he was giving me the most incredulous look while my mom and sister just kinda smiled and nodded...

Happy Birthday Sala Baker!

Hmm what is it about being on the cusp of Libra and Virgo that predisposes ringbearing? :p

That`s kinda creepy Hookbill...
 

My MSN messanger name was Happy Birthday Frodo yesterday! Strange how minds work, eh?

Yeah, I celebrate on the 22nd because that`s what the date is in the books (even though it`s based on the Shire calendar). Since it`s so confusing, I say we decide on a day that we should celebrate it on. ;)

mark12_30:
Alas, I took no pictures of my cake. I did run into a door while carrying it and got icing on my Frodo vest though...does that count for anything?

Another year, another birthday :)
 

And the thread comes up :D:D:D

Frodo Lives!

The hippie movement was a 60's thing, not 70's, although it obviously carried on to a smaller extent in that decade. I think it was the release of LotR in paperback that coincided with the rise of the hippies, and it became de rigueur to read it if you were part of that scene. That's when LotR really took off in popularity.

Anyway, regardless of Shire calendars and all that, 22nd September is the most logical day to celebrate the birthdays, so Hurrah for today! :D

My classmates were pulling a bit of "oh dear"-faces, when they saw Bilbo's and Frodo's birthday marked in my calendar... And they were absolutely out when they saw my "new year" in 25th March... Sometimes people who are not LotR-fans might be really funny :D ... I suppose they think I'm a bit strange :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FRODO AND BILBO!

Hip hip hurray!!

A very happy birthday to two very awesome hobbits. It certainly merited a little skipping about in happiness when I remembered what today was during lunch. :D

Happy Birthday to Frodo and Bilbo! I must admit that I forgot what day today was until I looked at this thread. :rolleyes:

Seems like a day to bring this up, now doesn't it?
 

So, as it has been established that it's 22nd up there :rolleyes:, let me state...

Happy birthday Bilbo!
Happy birthday Frodo!

:smokin:

Thank you Herin for resurrecting this thread. Appropriately, yesterday I got in the mail the 70th anniversary edition of The Hobbit, which Houghton Mifflin just released.

Happy birthday to Bilbo and Frodo.

Ack!! Yesterday! Belated.....

Another year, another anniversary...
 

So happy birthday to Master Bilbo and Master Frodo :)

Funny how nobody posted in here for a whole year...

Well, another bump then I suppose - it's already 22nd down here, and several hours off for majority of members I imagine

Nice of them to have been born on this very day of autumn, if only for our entertainment :) (apart from education, moral and otherwise, ethics and general outlook, whatever)

Oh, that's funny. I have been thinking that I should not miss acknowledging it this autumn, apparently I did so by half an hour - but the funny thing is, if I was home, it would still be about half an hour until the 22nd, so actually... :)

Well, happy birthday to the Bagginses! It's nice, anyway, isn't it? I think they could not have been born in a better date. This day is suddenly made far more interesting anyway. I doubt anybody has it as their national holiday. Though somebody should perhaps start making these daily planners with this day marked there among other national holidays (and maybe with the 25th of March or something, too).

To Bilbo and Frodo!

Drat it; I missed my chance. I should have flown out to Oxonmoot today instead of tomorrow.