Concerning Hobbits

Dear Ploughman,

Today is (if you have time for it) an excellent day for a party (or dinner, anyways) of special magnificence! I see it noted that tomorrow is "Second Breakfast" day, in honour of LXXV Publication Anniversary of the first installment of The Red Book. Hooray! This year also saw (or... will have seen?) the LVIII Publication Anniversary of the second installment, and together they make... er... CXXXIII, 133, a number nowhere to be known as one grass, of people or otherwise.

Alas that it will be Ember Friday; even more sorrowful, the Baggins' Combined Birthday will be Ember Saturday. Thus I remark with some admiration the Hobbit Custom of not assigning a Week Day to the Overlithe (two of them in leapyears); for by this simple concession to the regularity of Nature in defiance of Numerology, they have assured us that 22nd of September (SR) is always the Thursday (SR) between the Autumnal Ember Wednesday and Friday, because the 14th (SR) is always Wednesday (SR) in the week before. And so the purchase of provisions can quite sensibly fall to nearly nothing on the subsequent two days, and it did not matter much.

Now, to be sure, there are other fascinating emergent rhythms that this custom would tend to mute --- for instance, the cycling among the Joyful, Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries that each fixed feast progresses through. I can't remember whose 'blog wrote something to remark on that, but indeed it is something else to contemplate the Crucifixion on the very feast of the Annunciation (a.k.a. New Year's Day, in Gondor).

In Any Case, 'tis Today the Penultimate Thursday of September, and so Happy Birthday, Bilbo and Frodo!

having never cooked rabbit