How did the tradition of Bilbo Bagginss Birthday Party get started?
The year was 1976, and The Guinness Book of Records was a huge fad best-seller. Everyone in my high school was reading it, and dreamed of finding an easy record and breaking it by doing something like eating 100 eggs or jumping rope for 87 hours. GPGC counselor Tony Kushner (class of ’70) had already begun planning The World’s Largest Risk Game, to be played on the McNeese Quadrangle with real human (giftie) armies. But in the meantime, the weekends had to be filled with fun activities thought up by the counselors. And Tony’s next idea was The World’s Longest Bedtime Story. The idea was to celebrate Bilbo Baggins’s Birthday Party, and read The Hobbit from start to finish. The first BBBP included most of the trappings that it still has today: birthday cake, pajamas and pillows, and reading The Hobbit. In fact, that year, the kids pulled mattresses from empty rooms and made little makeshift beds in the upstairs lounge where the party was held. Sadly, we did not make it through the entire
