Editing Dwarves in Middle-earth (section)

=== Calendar ===

Tolkien's only mention of the Dwarves' calendar is in ''[[The Hobbit]]'', regarding the "dwarves' New Year" (''[[Durin]]'s Day''), which occurs on the day of the last new moon of autumn.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|loc=ch. 3 "A Short Rest"}}</ref> However, in his first drafts of the book, Durin's Day was the ''first'' new moon of autumn. After he had finished writing the book, Tolkien went back and changed all occurrences of the date to the last new moon, more in keeping with the real-world [[Celtic calendar]], but overlooked one mention in Chapter IV, which still named the date as the first new moon.<ref group=T>{{harvnb|Tolkien|1937|loc=ch. 4 "Over Hill and Under Hill"}}: "They had thought of coming to the secret door in the Lonely Mountain, perhaps that very next first moon of Autumn 'and perhaps it will be Durin's Day' they had said."</ref> Tolkien never noticed this inconsistency, and it was not corrected until the 1995 edition of the book.<ref>{{harvnb|Rateliff|2007|loc=Volume 1 ''Mr. Baggins'', p.124}}</ref> The astronomer [[Bradley E. Schaefer]] has analysed the astronomical determinants of Durin's Day. He concluded that – as with many real-world [[lunar calendar]]s – the date of Durin's Day is observational, dependent on the first visible crescent moon.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Schaefer |first=Bradley E. |author-link=Bradley E. Schaefer |title=The Hobbit and Durin's Day |journal=The Griffith Observer |volume=58 |issue=11 |year=1994 |publisher=[[Griffith Observatory]] |location=Los Angeles, California |pages=12–17}}</ref>