As described in the other answer, The Hobbit (published in 1937) begins in April and ends in November. This answer will cover the significance of these seasons in terms of J. R. R. Tolkien's background as a philologist who taught at Oxford University from 1925 to 1959. His academic specialty was medieval literature.
Tolkien's understanding of medieval religion and the underpinning of his mythological background to Middle Earth derive from a movement sometimes known as the myth and ritual school which explored the anthropological background of classical and medieval mythology.
The seminal figure in this movement was Sir James George Frazer, author of The Golden Bough (published in 1890–1915 in several volumes and editions). In medieval studies, a significant work in this school, which also influenced T. S. Eliot's The Wasteland, was From Ritual to Romance by Jessie L. Weston, published in 1920 and which applied Frazer's insights to medieval romance. The Cambridge Ritualists, including Jane Ellen Harrison, F.M. Cornford, and Gilbert Murray, applied this sort of analysis of ritual to classical studies.
A central pattern to this type of scholarship was its emphasis on myth and religion as evolving from fertility rituals designed to mourn the death of vegetation at the end of the growing season and encourage and celebrate its rebirth in the new growing season after lying dead or dormant underground.
According to these scholars, a particularly important figure in this system of ritual was the Year King, whose fertility was linked to that of the land. This sort of sympathetic magical association meant that an infertile or elderly king might lead to failure of the fertility of the crops and the old king would need to be sacrificed (usually symbolically) to bring about the rebirth of the fertility of the land.
In The Hobbit, Thorin Oakenshield represents new king who in April leads the adventurers to reclaim the lands devastated by Smaug. Like the Year-Kings of the vegetative cycle in mythology, he dies in November, as the crops die, and his replacement by a younger more fertile leader (the new Year King), Bard, restores the fertility of the land in a new Spring in the epilogue.
In the book The Hobbit, the first chapter contains the wizard Gandalf approaching Bilbo Baggins about going off on an adventure. This is in mid to late April, so in the spring. The next day is when thirteen dwarves show up at Bilbo’s house at Bag End, led by a dwarf named Thorin Oakenshield.
At this point, they convince Bilbo to come with them to help with their quest to reclaim their lost home in the Lonely Mountain from a dragon. The whole party, including Bilbo, sets off on their quest on the next day.
They travel towards their destination, with several stops on their way, and the day they find a door into the Lonely Mountain, their destination, it’s the day before the last week of autumn.
“Tomorrow will be a full moon and the beginning of the last week of Autumn,” Thorin Oakenshield says. This is estimated to be late October. The Battle of Five Armies occurs in late November, in the later chapters of the book.
The seasons have an important role to play in the novel because they back up the themes of the book. It is spring when they depart, which symbolizes a time for new things to happen. It is near the beginning of winter at the end when the Battle of Five Armies occurs and Thorin dies, symbolizing his death as the end of an age.
https://ece.uwaterloo.ca/~dwharder/Personal/Hobbit/A%20timeline%20for%20The%20Hobbit.pdf
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