The thirtieth of February?

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

In the Appendix B of LotR where The Tale of Years are and the Great Years start, under February it says

29 Meriadoc and Pippin escape and meet Treebeard. The Rohirrim attack at sunrise and destroy the Orcs. Frodo descends from Emyn Muil and meets Gollum. Faramir sees the funeral boat of Boromir.
30 Entmoot begins. Eomer returning to Edoras meets Aragorn

It also states in the Shire calender, the second month out of the year, Solmath has thirty days, but that is the Shire calender and it differs from ours.
This has gotten me confused, is this "February" that is stated in Appendix B the 'Shire February' or 'our' February, because if it is our February, then it should have only twenty eight days and twenty nine if it was a leap year, how then does February have thirty days? Is this just a typographical error that Tolkien and his publishers made, or was this 'error' supposed to be there and I am missing something?

[Kin-strife]

"The calendar used by the Hobbits of the Shire divided the year into twelve months which, unlike the irregular months of Roman and modern Europe, were of equal length: every month in the Hobbit year had exactly thirty days. This totals only 360 days, so the left-over five or six additional days in each year were invested in a pair of festivals, one at each solstice. The two days of Yule fell around the Winter solstice, between December and January; the first day of Yule was the last day of one year, and the second day of Yule was the new-year's day of the next. Six months later the festival of Lithe ornamented the Summer solstice, and lasted either three or four days: the first day of Lithe began the festival, followed by Midyear's Day itself, followed in leap years by an “Overlithe”, and then the festival ended on the second day of Lithe."

I got the above from a web-site called shire-reckoning.com, so where they got it I don't know. When I read your post I thought for one horrifying, earth-shattering second that Tolkien may have made a stupid mistake. So I quickly sprang into action and investigated. I thing Tokien just substituted the Shire months for our months, so Afteryule = January, Solmath = February etc. But he kept the 30 days to each month thing. Notice that nothing seems to happen on the 31st of any month. Footnote 7 in the appendix says "months and days are given according to the Shire calendar", and also notice in 3019 "1 Lithe. Arwen comes to the city"

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

So what you're saying is that this 'February' in Appendix B is actually the second Shire month? Because if it is then that would answer the question of why there is thirty days in February.

[The Might]

Yes, TGEW, that is correct.

[TheGreatElvenWarrior]

Okay then, that solves my question... I suppose that this is a "dead thread" then...

I'm glad I have simple questions that can be answered and solved in about four posts...

[The Might]

No, it actually only took one post to answer.