Today, September 22nd, is Bilbo Baggins' birthday. Bilbo Baggins, if you are unfamiliar with him (though I dare say anyone reading this blog better know him quite well) is a hobbit who goes on a dangerous adventure with eleven dwarfs and a wizard in the well-known book, The Hobbit, written by J. R. R. Tolkien. Bilbo also appears at the beginning of Tolkien's epic, The Lord of the Rings, throwing a magnificent party for his eleventy-first birthday. So in memory of Bilbo, some of my friends, like the nerds they are, celebrated his birthday last year, watching a clayanimation version of The Hobbit and drinking to Bilbo's health.
We decided to celebrate his birthday again this year (along with Frodo's, of course, since they both have the same birthday). However, celebrating his birthday was easier last year, seeing as we were at the same school and together to his health. Usually it gets us stares, weird looks, and lots of questions.
Today I couldn't. You see, I'm in Oxford, and most of my favorite partiers and hobbit-impersonators are on the other side of the pond. However, even without my closest friends nearby wearing their cloaks, today was amazing.
You see, I'm in Oxford.
This is where J. R. R. Tolkien lived. He wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings in Oxford. He attended mass here. He drank, chatted and discussed engrossing topics in the pubs here. And here, in Oxford, I got to celebrate Bilbo Baggins' birthday.
Kind of cool, huh?
At 5pm we met to go on our tour of the sights. Our first stop was Magdelen College. One of the garden paths was where J.R.R. Tolkien finally converted Lewis to Christianity. Apparently, Tolkien, Lewis, and another friend went on their walk after dinner and didn't come back until 3am in the morning. Yet we left a little late, and due to the college's early closing times, were not able to enter and see the walk. So we trekked to Tolkien's house.
After a good walk from one part of town to another, we arrived at the two houses where Tolkien used to live. The lady who lived there didn't seem too keen on a group of college students staring at her house, so after taking some group pictures and gazing in awe at the historical landmark, we heading back into town. It was dinner time.
[Walking back was quite fun, as was walking everywhere. Just to help you understand, each of these walks takes about fifteen minutes, so there is definitely time to chat. Heading from our meeting point to Magdelen College, a friend and I traded our favorite verses in Ecclesiastes. From Magdelen College to Tolkien's house, many conversations took place. There was mention of The Lord of the Rings movie soundtrack dressing up in full medieval or Renaissance garb for a formal or ball, and steampunk. And returning to town from Tolkien's house, a Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog song was sung and I debated my own subjective view about my desires, beliefs, and why I believed them with my other friend's subjective view of his desires, beliefs and why he believes them (yes, we covered Hume today. Philosophy role-playing. Nice.) Needless to say, the walks were half the adventure.]
Ahem, so we headed back into town, for as I mentioned before, it was dinner time. And where did we decide to go, you ask? Why, yes, that's right. We went to The Eagle and Child. Lewis and Tolkien used to visit this pub every Tuesday to discuss their papers, stories and thought-projects. (You can tell, then why going here was a big deal.) After taking pictures in front of it, we arranged a table in the back for ourselves, went to the bar and ordered. When we had all sat down again, the moment came that we had all been waiting for: someone pulled out the first book of The LOTR series, The Fellowship of the Ring, and we began reading. After only a few sentences, a couple came up to us. Noticing that we were "reading Tolkien", they asked if we had heard about the annual Tolkien festival this weekend, being held in Oxford. We said no, and they went on to explain that on the weekend nearest to Bilbo's birtday, people come from around the world to Oxford to listen to lectures, eat, drink, and talk about Tolkien and his works (For more information, see http://www.oxonmoot.org/ ). We thanked her and continued reading the first chapter, the story of Bilbo's birthday party. As our food arrived, we continued to pass the book around and reading it aloud.
We read until Bilbo disappeared, and part of the group decided to head back. That is, not until someone cried out that we should sing "Happy Birthday" to Bilbo. Before any of us could react, she and a few others had begun singing Happy Birthday loudly. So we had to join along, no matter what we thought, or how weird we felt. [Remember, we're a bunch of twenty year old men and women sitting in a pub, loudly singing a song to a fictional character. We couldn't have just let a couple people out of a group of ten college students sing to a Lord of the Rings character: I mean, that wouldn't have been respectful to Bilbo.]
We arrived at the third line, and we had just sung "Happy Birthday dear Bilbo--" when some people across the room chimed in "And Frodo!" We had forgotten him. We finished the song much more relaxed and in better spirits then we were in before starting. I'm glad that out here, in England and the rest of Europe, there are people just as nerdy as us.
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