The Wisdom of the Shire

The “Party Tree” was the gigantic tree that grew just south of Bag End and was the site of Bilbo’s famous eleventy-first birthday party, where hundreds of families from around the Shire came to share in his and his nephew Frodo’s combined celebration.

The tree was a magnificent specimen, thick of trunk and vivid with autumn leaves, a colorful symbol of Bilbo’s lofty standing in the Shire. A giant tent was erected over the Party Tree, enclosing it in a canvas pavilion, and lanterns were hung from the limbs. It was underneath this tree that Bilbo gave his famous Farewell Speech, before slipping on the One Ring and disappearing from the Shire forever.*

When Frodo and his friends return to Bag End after the War of the Ring, they are stunned to see the Party Tree has been chopped down and is now rotting in the field. This was one of Saruman the wizard’s final malicious acts, like Melkor cutting down the Two Trees of Valinor.* Saruman wanted to kill all joy in Hobbiton. Destroying the symbol of birthdays was the most obvious thing for him to do.

Sam is so overcome with emotion he bursts into tears. In his eyes this is worse than the desolation of Mordor. But Sam bucks up and quickly replants the tree with the single silver seed given to him by Galadriel.*

Birthdays are very important to the Hobbits, you must understand. And they have a unique way of celebrating them. Instead of getting presents, they give them. Every day of the year, we’re told, it’s probably someone’s birthday in the Shire, and so a Hobbit is likely to get a present every day of the year. This is one of their little ways of reaffirming life.

Hobbits don’t give big gifts, mind you. Instead they re-gift little presents called mathoms—things that are lying around their own cluttered Hobbit-hole. The origin of the word comes from the Old English name for a treasure that was presented to a warrior in payment for a great deed in battle. In the olden days of the Shire, long before the War of the Ring begins, the Hobbits had to fight for survival in a dangerous world. At the start of The Lord of the Rings, however, all of the ancient trophies of war are collecting dust in Mathom-house (the Shire’s equivalent of a museum).

In this age of Middle-earth a mathom for a Hobbit might be food or something useful like clothing. Gifting has become a symbol of friendship rather than the glory of war. Gollum, when he claims to have been given the One Ring as a birthday present, is perverting the sanctity of this Hobbit act of generosity.

Bilbo’s eleventy-first birthday party was a grand event, with singing and dancing, enough food to feed practically the entire Shire, as well as games and fireworks. Anyone who’s seen the film adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring knows what a Hobbit celebration probably looks like. But what about a smaller, more intimate party?*

Let’s imagine a young Hobbit’s birthday party five years after Bilbo’s epic shindig. He’s invited a few of his closest friends to his comfortable hole in the bank of a hill. It’s September (the month of Halimath by “Shire-reckoning”). The guests start arriving around sundown and are greeted at the door by their smiling host. The gardener is first, straight from washing up after a hard but happy day’s work.

Then comes a very portly fellow, famous in the Shire for his girth, and eager for dinner to start. He hangs up his colorful cloak on a peg in the hall and turns as “the cousins” burst through the door, a drinking-song on their lips. They’re a notorious pair of mischief-makers who’ve come straight from The Ivy Bush where they’ve been sampling the new ale.

Soon it’s “raining food and snowing drink” as the old Hobbit saying goes. The friends feast and drink, and sing about feasting and drinking, starting off the night with “The Man in the Moon Stayed Up Too Late” and going straight into “The Man in the Moon Came Down Too Soon.” And then doing them both again for good measure.

After they’ve stuffed themselves on Hobbit fare, and have a playful shoving match to see who gets the last stuffed mushroom, they break out the Longbottom Leaf and the host starts passing around the presents—a special gift for each of his friends. Some pruning shears for his gardener, travel-sized pipes for the cousins, a walking stick for his portly friend (to encourage a little exercise).

The young Hobbit’s guests praise him to the top of the Party Tree. Then to the moon! Nay! To the Star of Eärendil shining so brightly in the sky! They take a walk together under the stars, breathing in the crisp night air, and wonder what lies beyond the distant hills, far to the east where lies adventure and the unknown.*

When I was in my early twenties I decided to have a Hobbit birthday. I was very poor at the time, practically destitute, and so I gave my friends and family mathoms—books and CDs and things I had on hand. I asked everyone to refrain from giving me gifts as part of my experiment. It actually felt better giving than getting, despite the many things I could have used. It was a liberating event.

In this age of conspicuous consumption and mass consumerism, is it really necessary for adults to have birthday parties every year where they are lavished with gifts? Advertisers distort reality so thoroughly they’d have us believe the only gift that could truly make us happy (and satisfy that emptiness in our souls) is a new car, or perhaps a diamond ring. Wouldn’t it be an interesting change to have a Hobbit birthday?

Here’s what you might try. On the illustrious day of your birth try giving presents to all of your family and friends. You can make the presents yourself, or just offer them some little mathom that’s lying around your house—something you love like a book or an object you’ve picked up in your travels. Then cook a Hobbit feast and invite everyone you love for a celebration not only of your life, but also of your life with them.

The Lady Galadriel doesn’t need the excuse of a birthday to bestow gifts upon the Companions. Upon their departure from Lothlórien she provides them all with something from her stockpile of Elven mathoms: a sheath, a broach, a bow and quiver, belts and some strands of her hair (for a besotted Dwarf). To Frodo she bestows a crystal phial containing the magical light of Eärendil. And to Sam she gives the most magical gift of all—that small wooden box filled with the dust of the Golden Wood and a single mallorn seed.*

Perhaps Galadriel foresaw the destruction of the Party Tree in her mystical mirror. Maybe she knew that nothing she could ever give to Sam would mean more than the resurrection of the symbol of Hobbiton. Sam lives a long and happy life after the War of the Ring. Frodo gives him and his wife Bag End where they raise thirteen children. The new Party Tree, we must assume, becomes an enormous and famous landmark, towering above the Hill.*

After Sam’s wife Rosie dies decades later, the grief-stricken Hobbit departs the Shire forever and heads to the Grey Havens where he will sail over the sea to the Undying Lands, the last of the Ring-bearers. The date is September 22nd. The shared birthday of his beloved friends—Frodo and Bilbo.

The Wisdom of the Shire Tells Us …

“Celebrate your birthday by honoring others with the mathom of your friendship and love.”