Hobbits have got celebrations down to a fine art. Their love of large social gatherings, a good drink and a feast of hearty food, and especially gift-giving, has made them excellent party-goers. There are a whole host of mathoms that have been handed around the shire multiple times, often finding their way back to their original owner, who by this point no longer remembers it was theirs in the first place. Although there are many different types of hobbits, they all seem to enjoy word games like riddles, enunciating long and lofty speeches, and blowing smoke rings from the Old Toby, the finest pipe-weed in the South-farthing. And although Frodo and Bilbo are considered particularly weird or odd for associating with the other creatures of Middle Earth, including elves, dwarves and wizards, another thing that all of the hobbits have in common when it comes to a love of festivities is Gandalf’s famous fireworks.
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But one question that many Lord of the Rings fans have wondered over the years, is whether or not the hobbits celebrate Christmas? Some form of winter celebration has existed in lots of different cultures and religions, but does this tradition include Middle Earth? The answer can be found in Appendix D entitled ‘The Shire Calendar For Use In All Years’. Here, Tolkien rights about many of the events that happen across a year by Shire-reckoning, and one of them included is “the last day of the year and the first day of the next year were called the Yuledays.” and were known as the “chief holidays and times of feasting.” So this is the hobbit equivalent of a human Christmas and new year’s celebration.
Tolkien himself was raised as a Catholic, by a priest whom he and his brother were entrusted to when their mother tragically died of complications arising due to diabetes. So it seemed important to him that the hobbits had some way of recognizing the passing of the year, and the honoring of the changing seasons. Although it is not technically Christmas, because Christmas is a Christian celebration, and the hobbits don’t conform to any specific religion or belief system, Yule days are the Middle Earth variation of the holidays that Tolkien fans know and love.
It is believed by many that Tolkien thought of Middle Earth as a part of the Earth’s history and that Middle Earth would later become something akin to Europe. If this is the case, it could be argued that hobbits are a pre-cursor to a Christian society, and that Yule days are the earliest edition of a holiday that might later become known as Christmas. This is just a theory, however, as the lore doesn’t stretch far beyond the Fifth Age, which would still be years before it had turned into Earth if it ever did.
In many ways though, Yule-days are similar to Christmas, in so far as the copious amounts of food eaten (though this is not really unusual for a normal day in the life of hobbits!) the gift-giving, and even the snow that falls outside the windows of the snug holes in the ground. There was once a winter long ago that was so cold that the Brandywine river froze over, and Wolves came down from the mountains, but it passed into memory long before Frodo and Bilbo’s time, who now see snow as nothing more than an exciting winter wonderland.
Hobbits are not the only lovers of festivity, and there are many accounts throughout the trilogy of raucous soirees, merriment by the fire accompanied by songs and poetry, and huge candle-lit feasts in honor of guests arriving, such as is thrown in Rivendell in Frodo’s honor or is expected by Gimli when the fellowship enters the Mines of Moria, before he realizes that his kin has been slain by Orcs. There is also a scene in the Return of the King where a famous drinking game takes place between Legolas the elf and Gimli the dwarf after the battle of Helm’s Deep. But whether or not the rest of Middle Earth celebrates the Yule days, or only the hobbits, is unknown.
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