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The only hobbit Thorin has actually spent any time around is, of course, Bilbo. So when Bilbo invites Thorin to accompany him to the Shire’s midsummer festival, since they will be in the area during the trip to the Blue Mountains to escort a caravan from thence to Erebor, Thorin assumes several things about what such a festival will involve:
Food, of course. Lots of it, and very good food. Which is probably going to be the saving grace of the whole ordeal.
Endless nattering about handkerchiefs and the minutiae of “proper” clothing - which means something very different to hobbits than it does to dwarrow.
Equally endless gossip about the interfamily politics of the Shire, which is sort of fascinating - it’s definitely as complicated as dwarven interfamily politics - but Thorin really has enough to deal with in trying to keep Erebor’s growing population from dissolving into internecine strife, and cannot for the life of him keep all of Bilbo’s hundreds of cousins straight. It doesn’t help that Khuzdul has nice precise terms for things like “second-cousin-by-marriage’s nephew” and hobbits just say “cousin’s nephew” and expect everyone to know who they mean.
A great deal of sitting around being polite to people, by hobbit values of polite, which are a level of arcane complexity even Balin finds baffling.
A distinct lack of music. Every dwarrow knows how to play something, and yet somehow Bilbo doesn’t, so Thorin assumes hobbits just aren’t terribly interested in music.
Lots and lots and lots of hobbits being vocally baffled by his boots and beard.
As it turns out, Thorin is right about exactly two of those assumptions: there is, in fact, endless incomprehensible gossip, and there is such a ridiculous abundance of food that he is honestly rather dazed by the sight.
Everything else he expected is…very, very wrong.
The hobbits don’t seem to care about their clothing, though they do all have their hair and foot-hair combed very precisely. They also don’t seem to care much about propriety, given the number of weirdly sideways insults which go flying past Thorin’s head - though, interestingly, none of them are directed at Thorin’s dwarvishness. They only sit down during the actual eating portion of the celebration, though to be fair that goes on for quite a long time. As soon as the food has been demolished, all of them are on their feet, and an entire little band starts playing, and the hobbits start dancing.
Thorin sits there staring. It’s nothing like dwarven dancing. Dwarrow dance in patterns, stomping and twirling to the steady beat of drums, often chanting as they dance. Hobbits, it appears, are not quite as regimented in their dancing. Their feet move so quickly they blur; they whirl and leap and trade partners every few seconds. He even sees some of the younger hobbits doing handsprings.
And Bilbo - staid, proper, fussy little Bilbo - is right in the middle of the chaos, head thrown back to laugh aloud.
Thorin has never seen Bilbo so…uninhibited. So purely joyful. On the quest, he was always worried, always out of place; in Erebor, he has become Balin’s right hand and Bombur’s most cherished assistant and Ori’s boon companion, and seems to be always busy with something. Thorin hadn’t known Bilbo could look this carefree.
And then Bilbo looks over to meet Thorin’s eyes and grins and comes skipping out of the throng to grab Thorin’s hand. “Come on!” he cries. “I know dwarrow like to dance.”
“Not like this,” Thorin protests, but he lets Bilbo pull him out onto the field. It takes bare moments for them to be surrounded by big-eyed hobbit children, who seem thrilled to meet a real live dwarf. They insist on trying to teach Thorin to dance like they do, and fall over laughing when he cannot manage to keep pace with their quicksilver feet.
Thorin ends up with a hobbit child sitting on each boot and another dangling from each hand and several sitting on his shoulders, and Bilbo laughing so hard he has to stop dancing. Thorin’s own cheeks hurt from grinning.
Hobbit celebrations, Thorin decides, are actually quite pleasant things.