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Trick or Treat? Spooky Middle-Earth

© Michael Martinez

Most Tolkien fans will immediately recognize September 22 as the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, but their September 22 was not our September 22. Tolkien's offbeat calendar system for the Shire made the Hobbits' September 22 fall on our September 14 (September 13 in a Leap Year). So, for years, you've been toasting Bilbo and Frodo's good health 8 days too late. Halloween is not an especially important date in the Tolkien calendars, either. Our October 31 (All Hallows' Eve) falls on the Hobbits' November 9. By that time, their harvest is way behind them. But Halloween did not really originate in a harvest festival, as some have told the tale. It began as the Celtic festival called Samhain in Irish Gaelic (pronounced SOW-en, despite the "m" in the middle of the word). According to tradition, Samhain was the time of year when the Celts extinguished their hearth-fires, put on special costumes, and attended bonfires ignited by Druidic priests. The Celts believed this was the time of year, as Summer gave way to Autumn, when the spirits of the dead were most likely to return to the world of the living. These spirits were expected to help the living foretell each other's fortunes (and occasionally get into mischief). The Celts often dressed up in costumes as they celebrated their new year. When the festivities were over, so traditions say, the Druids would give an ember from the bonfire to each family in the community, and they would use that ember to relight their hearthfires for the coming year. The Eldar of Imladris observed their New Year about the Shire's April 6, which would be about our March 29. The Shire's New Year fell on our December 23. And the poor Dwarves, living by a Lunar Calendar for part of their shadowy history, celebrated the last new moon of Autumn as their new year's day, calling it Durin's Day (perhaps commemorating the day Durin I awoke, or the day he died). Lalaith suggests that Durin's Day may have fallen around the 14th day of the 10th month in the year T.A. 2941 (the only year in which Durin's Day figures prominently in a story -- that story being The Hobbit). Well, our October 14 would be the Shire's October 22, which is as close as you can get a Middle-earth holiday to October 31. Mid-October thus marks the Autumn period of the Shire and adjacent lands. And though the Shire-folk, who were largely farmers, put some emphasis on their harvests, they did not offer their first fruits to pagan gods, as the Celts did. Nor did the Hobbits engage in prophecy or dressing up in costume. They probably would have enjoyed the modern custom of trick-or-treating, which is believed to have arisen from a Church-sponsored practice of giving "soul-cakes" to poor people who begged for food on All Hallows' Eve. The poor people were expected to pray for the spirits of dead relatives (of the cake-givers).