Chi Alpha @ Stanford

This is a very impor­tant date: the eleventy-first birth­day of J. R. R. Tolkien (bio).

As fans are no doubt aware, the novels begin with the sentence: "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be cel­e­brat­ing his eleventy-first birth­day with a party of spe­cial magnificence, there was much talk and excite­ment in Hobbiton.”

In honor of this momen­tous occa­sion, we’re going to have a party fea­tur­ing a game of pin the ring on the hob­bit, snack foods men­tioned in the works of Tolkien, and the time-honored toast, “The Pro­fes­sor.” We’ll also show the extended DVD ver­sion of LOTR: The Fel­low­ship of the Ring (but you don’t need to stay for that). There will be much more, but I hope that whets your appetite to come!

Come to our place (direc­tions) at 7pm tonight. The toast will be at 9pm (to coin­cide with the world­wide toast­ing of Tolkien by other fans).

We will we will have a small hand­out high­light­ing Tolkien’s moti­va­tion for writ­ing fan­tasy nov­els, but this be very low-key: there will be no gospel pre­sen­ta­tion or invi­ta­tion to receive Christ. This is just an oppor­tu­nity for us to have fun together and cel­e­brate the good­ness of life.