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The Shire Calendar One of the most useful and fascinating parts of The Lord of the Rings are the Appendices. The Tale of Years, the Family Trees, notes on languages… all of these things are fodder for the fanfic writer, as well as giving us some of the details that give verisimilitude to Middle-earth and to our stories. JRRT himself made no use within the story of the calendars he created for his world. He consistently used the modern names of days and months, rather than the less familiar ones he devised. Perhaps he (or his editor) thought that it would be confusing for readers to understand the unusual names. It was probably a wise decision, as first-time readers would have no frame of reference for them. And yet it is a shame to allow the wonderful calendar he created go to waste. In addition, the truth is that there are enough differences between the Shire Calendar and the modern calendar to make it rather inexact to correlate the months (for example, our February has only 28 days except in Leap year, when it has 29. The Shire version of February, Solmath, always has 30 days.) "The Calendar in the Shire differed in several features from ours. The year no doubt was of the same length, for long ago as those times are now reckoned in years and lives of men, they were not very remote according to the memory of the Earth. It is recorded by the Hobbits that they had no 'week' when they were still a wandering people, and though they had 'months', governed more or less by the Moon, their keeping of dates and calculations of time were vague and insecure. In the westlands of Eriador, when they had begun to settle down. they adopted the King's reckoning of the Dúnedain, which was ultimately of Eldarin origin; but the Hobbits of the Shire introduced several minor alterations. This calendar, or Shire Reckoning' as it was called, was eventually adopted also in Bree, except for the Shire usage of counting as Year 1 the year of the colonization of the Shire". (LotR, Appendix D) (In making use of Shire Reckoning, for those who usually write using the Númenorean dates, it is simple enough to convert to Shire Reckoning by simply subtracting 1600 (the year of the Third Age in which the Shire was founded) from the relevant Third Age year.) "The Shire names are set out in the Calendar. It may be noted that Solmath was usually pronounced, and sometimes written Somath. Thrimidge was often written Thrimich (archaically Thrimilch) and Blotmath was pronounced Blodmath or Blommath. In Bree, the names varied, being Frery, Solmath, Rethe, Chithing, Thrimidge, Lithe, The Summerdays, Mede, Wedmath, Harvestmath, Wintring, Blooting, and Yulemath. Frery, Chithing and Yulemath were also used in the Eastfarthing." (LotR, Appendix D) The calendar I have arranged differs from the one JRRT has in Appendix D only in having the days of the week added for convenience. "Its [the Yellowskin] earliest entries seem to have begun at least nine hundred years before Frodo's time, and many are cited in the Red Book annals and genealogies. In these, the weekday names appear in archaic forms, of which the following are the oldest: Sterrendei, (2) Sunnendei, (3) Monendei, (4) Trewesdei, (5) Hevensdei, (6) Meresdei, (7) Highdei. In the language of the time of the War of the Ring these had become Sterday, Sunday, Monday, Trewsday, Hevensday (or Hensday), Mersday, Highday. There are some very elegant and sophisticated elements to the Shire Calendar, that to my own mind make it in many ways superior to the modern calendar in use today. Not only do the years begin and end on the same days of the week each and every year, but the second half of the year begins and ends in the same way as the first half of the year. And each year, the same dates will always fall on the same day of the week, meaning, for example, that Frodo's and Bilbo's birthday will always fall on a Mersday (Thursday). Using the calendars that JRRT devised is not truly necessary in fanfic, given his own example, but personally I find using the Shire Calendar helps give me the feel of being more immersed in Middle-earth. At any rate, I think it is truly fascinating.
Midsummer's Day Lithe was a three-day holiday most years. It consisted of 1 Lithe, which was the last day of Forelithe, Midsummer's Day (a day which was not part of a month or a week), and 2 Lithe, which was the first day of Afterlithe. Midsummer's Day occurred each year, but "Overlithe" only occurred in leap years. The only Overlithe we have a definite year for is SR 1420. Using that date, it is easy enough to figure up and down to other years that would have had the extra Litheday.
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