silwritersguild | Art for the Season's Greetings/New Year's Resolution challenges: Holiday Cards from Arda

Title: Holiday Cards from Arda
Artist: Lyra
Rating: Gen
Warnings: Rather image-heavy
Summary: Five cards that might, perhaps, have been sent out for different holidays by different inhabitants of Middle-earth, Númenor and Tol Eressëa.

New Year's card from Gondor. A flowering branch of the White Tree (or maybe it's just ordinary silverberry), and (hopefully) "Happy New Year" in Sindarin.

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A card for Tarnin Austa, a celebration of the first day of summer in Gondolin. Depicting a bridge... towards a gate... behind which is a lush summery garden. How very symbolic. The Quenya is supposed to mean "May you have a blessed Tarnin Austa".

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A card for the Númenórean thanksgiving festival of Eruhantalë: A harvest wreath in the foreground, with the Meneltarma in the background. Yes, the Meneltarma has been heavily inspired by Hokusai's woodcuts of Mt. Fuji, because that's how I roll. The inscription hopefully reads "On Eruhantalë, bliss and reasons to be grateful". The Tengwar have been inspired by the inscription of Elendil's words on Tolkien's cover design for The Return of the King, because I like the idea that the Númenóreans generally wrote Tengwar that way.

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Do Dwarves send out greeting cards for Durin's Day? Well, I wanted to include the Dwarves in this, so here's a Durin's Day card. The sky is probably unlikely if not impossible, but hush, it's symbolic (TM): The sickle of the last moon in autumn, visible at the same time as the sun. Because subtlety is not my friend, I included the crown of stars (Corona borealis), mirrored in a lake. With mountains and autumn colours. I know no Khuzdul whatsoever, so I checked the Dwarrow Scholar's Neo-Khuzdul dictionary. I hope I managed to write "(A) good Durin's Day" properly.

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Time for winter, and the Yule-ish holiday of Turuhalmë celebrated (according to the Book of Lost Tales) by the Noldor on Tol Eressëa. So we have a wintery wood (does it even snow on Tol Eressëa? Who knows! If it doesn't, they're clearly remembering it from back in Beleriand), with five Elves in silhouette drawing/pushing a log through the snow. They better hurry, because the sun is already setting, which is how I justified the lazy silhouettes to myself. The text is Quenya once again, and hopefully reads "Wishing you warmth for winter on Turuhalmë".