[jallanite]

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin

Here's where it gets odd: the text has, the day prior, "Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn." But don't the Dwarves use a lunar calendar? At least their New Year is defined in lunar terms: the first day of the last moon of Autumn. Do they define their seasons on a solar basis? It seems the only way to make it work, if the season is held to begin just a week after the new moon.

Agreed that it is obvious that the dwarves must use a solar calendar when calculating seasons. But nowhere that I can find is it indicated that “the season is held to begin just a week after the new moon.” That would link the season to a lunar calendar (at least for purposes of calculating the new year). But, as is obvious, the season is not so linked. In the text Durin’s Day and the dwarves’ new year actually occurs the following day after Thorin’s remark that “Tomorrow begins the last week of autumn”, not a week later.

As Rateliff points out in The History of the Hobbit, pp. 480–81, this dating makes the subsequent chronology either impossible or at least very unlikely as Bilbo supposedly spends Yule with Beorn on his journey back home. If Yule is to be identified with New Years Day as in the Númenórean calendar, rather than Christmas, it only becomes barely possible.

The early text rendered by Rateliff is (475):

‘Autumn will be in tomorrow’ said Thorin one day.
‘And winter comes after autumn’ said Bifur.

The First Typescript is given by Rateliff on page 481:

“Tomorrow begins the last month [> week] of Autumn” said Thorin one day. “And winter comes after autumn” said Bifur.

Tolkien later remarks in Appendix D of The Lord of the Rings:

The seasons usually named were tuilë spring, lairë summer, yávië autumn (or harvest), hrívë winter; but these had no exact definitions, and quellë (or lasselanta) was also used for the latter part of autumn and the beginning of winter.

By indicating that seasons had no precise definitions Tolkien may be attempting to cover The Hobbit chronology as published indicating that “the last week of autumn and the beginning of winter″ is to be imagined to occur earlier in the chronology of The Hobbit than the names of the seasons suggests using our terminology.