Happy Birthday, Bilbo and Frodo Baggins

Hobbit Day Banner (c)theisleofapples
Hobbit Day Banner (c)theisleofapples

22nd September is a very special day for Tolkien fans all over the world as it is the birthday of two very special hobbits – Bilbo and Frodo Baggins.

On this day the world over people celebrate Middle-earth and its creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, in many different ways – from simply re-reading the books to throwing a party, from sharing the love and fellowship via social media to meeting up with friends to enjoy The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings in one way or another.

To give you an idea of how people go about this I’d love to show you some pictures from Instagram where a lot of fans from all over the world are posting pictures on #HobbitDay as it is more generally called. It is quite lovely to see that libraries and universities have started to chime in with the fans, offering links to their Tolkien collections.

Sharing the love from all over the world

It is a lot of fun to browse through the hashtag #HobbitDay. More than 4,000 pictures and videos have been posted, most of which appeared in recent years, of course, and the most popular had garnered 26K+ views at the time of writing (from a travel blogger, of course!) You will find a Gandalf sitting in a library, book posts, hand-drawn cards, quite a few shops offering hobbit discounts for the day (why they didn’t offer 33% I cannot understand!), giveaways, and today is also the end of #TolkienWeek, another recent hashtag which lets the fun begin a week before #HobbitDay.

Happy Hobbit Day 😀

Picture credit: Hobbit Day Banner by theisleofapples

Marcel R. Bülles

Marcel R. Bülles is the author of thetolkienist.com, a specialist blog centering on worldwide Tolkien fandom, geekdom and research. He works as a freelance translator, journalist and writer and is the founder of the German Tolkien Society as well as a co-founder to RingCon, Europe's formerly biggest fantasy film convention. You can find him in cafés all over the world sipping an espresso blogging, writing, reading. At one point he was married to an extremely lovely French lady by the nickname of Sauron. Yes, that Sauron. He is also active with the International Tolkien Fellowship on Facebook and the Tolkien Folk on Instagram.