A Look At The Scotish New Year Celebration

What is Hogmanay?

For most of the world December 31 is New Year’s Eve, but in Scotland it’s something much more important: Hogmanay.

So what is it, and why does it make Aberdonians set fire to stuff?

Hogmanay is a very big deal in Scotland. It’s the biggest day in the festive calendar, a celebration that makes Christmas Day seem very small indeed – and it’s like nothing else on Earth.

What is Hogmanay?
Hogmanay is what the Scots call their New
Year’s Eve celebrations.
The origins of the word are unclear – some say it’s a corruption of the Greek words for ‘holy month’, others that it’s of French origin – but the celebrations themselves
go back centuries.

Where did Hogmanay come from?
Hogmanay’s origins are viking. Norse invaders celebrated the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, with wild parties in late December.

Those parties began to incorporate elements from the Gaelic Samhain winter festival, which celebrates the beginning of winter, and Yule, whose celebrations were known as ‘daft days’ inScotland.

Like many annual celebrations, the end result is a mix of its various influences.

Why is it such a big deal?

Because until very recently, Scots didn’t do
Christmas. The party-loving Protestant
Reformation effectively banned Christmas for 400 years, and Christmas Day didn’t even become a public holiday in Scotland until 1958 and Boxing Day didn’t become a holiday until 1974.
So while the rest of the world celebrated
Christmas, Scots toiled. Their family get-
togethers happened at Hogmanay instead.
How is it different from other New Year’s Eve celebrations?
It’s longer. Hogmanay starts on New Year’s Eve but continues throughout New Year’s Day and into January 2, which is a public holiday inScotland.

While the rest of the UK is generally getting back to work on the 2nd, Scotland looks like that bit at the beginning of 28 Days Later when the streets are deserted.

How do Scots celebrate Hogmanay?
Most Scots party, but they also observe a
number.of traditions. The most popular one is first-footing, where the first person to enter the house after midnight ideally a tall, dark man – brings gifts such as food or coal.

First-footing is supposed to affect
the household’s fortunes for the coming year, so if your first visitor is a small blonde woman you’re stuffed!

Other traditions include cleaning the house before Hogmanay arrives, watching terrible TV programmes before the bells chime and singing Robert Burns’ poem, Auld Lang Syne.
That singing is accompanied by a mass linking of arms, and those arms are supposed to then cross each singer’s chest for the final verse. While most people know the first verse, the lusty singing tends to tail off in the second as people realise
they don’t know most of the words.