The occasional rambling thoughts of a Scotsman (just about) living abroad

Even though Scotland, England, Wales & Northern Ireland are all part of the United Kingdom, share a monarch and a parliament, there are differences in public holidays and how we observe them. In Scotland, the differences start early in the year – the 2nd of January. New Year’s Day is a public holiday across the entire UK, but Scotland also has the 2nd as holiday, and for good reason.

The celebration of the New Year is a big deal in Scotland. Up to about 50 years ago, Christmas wasn’t a Scottish public holiday – New Year was the big deal. Even though we now celebrate Christmas just as much as the rest of the UK, New Year is still something special. There are parties, concerts, people roaming the streets and even a special name for New Year’s Eve – Hogmanay. In Scotland you don’t go to a New Year’s party, you go to a Hogmanay party. For some reason the words we use focus more on the last day of the old year rather than the start of the new one, but don’t think that detracts from the festivities. Parties commonly run to the wee small hours or all the way through to the next day and bleary-eyed people walking home in full party dress is a common sight on New Year’s Day. Recently outdoor parties in Glasgow and Edinburgh have become popular and in Stonehaven, people walk through the streets of the town while spinning balls of fire around their heads, finally throwing them into the harbour as a climax. The balls are 3 foot in diameter and the chains are only 6 foot long, so those swinging the balls are encouraged to wait until afterwards before toasting the New Year.

On January 25th we celebrate a uniquely Scottish holiday – Burns Night. This is believed to be the birthday of Robert Burns, the most famous Scottish poet of them all. Even if you haven’t heard of Burns, you will still know some of his contributions to the English language. The title of John Steinbeck’s novel “Of Mice And Men” is a reference to the Burns poem “To a Mouse” and comes from the line “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men, Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain”. Burns also worked to preserve traditional Scottish songs, including “Auld Lang Syne” and wrote a poem about Halloween (more on that holiday later).

Burns night revolves around the Burns Supper. These can be very informal or very formal and there is a set format for those inclined to use it. Really the only constants in a Burns Supper are Haggis, Whisky and possibly the Burns poem “Ode to a Haggis”. Haggis is the traditional Scottish food. It is something like a big sausage filled with onion, oatmeal, spices and minced up left over bits from a sheep – heart, lungs & liver. You may find this disgusting (and in fact it is illegal in the USA where animal lungs are not permitted in food by federal law), but think of it this way – once the landowner had taken all the good bits of the sheep, how could you make the rest of it passably edible? I think that Haggis has this in common with dishes made from bird’s nest (ask who got the bird?) and shark’s fin (someone else already took the good bits of the shark and left this damn fin behind!), with my apologies to Terry Pratchett.

Note for residents of USA and the rest of the world: When you ask what Haggis is you are likely to be told that it is a small hairy creature with the legs on one side of it’s body longer than on the other so it can run around mountains easily. This may be developed further to say that there are “left-handed” and “right-handed” haggis, which run around the mountains in different directions. If you believe this you will only perpetuate the myth that all tourists are ridiculously gullible and you will be laughed at in your absence when the storyteller next meets his friends for a drink. We are a hospitable and friendly people, but we do like a laugh.

In summer, Glasgow businesses traditionally closed for the 3rd and 4th weeks of July and this was known as the “Glasgow Fair” or “Fair Fortnight”. This was originally associated with an actual fair on Glasgow Green, which has been recently reinstated. When I was growing up in Glasgow in the 1970’s, most factory workers still had their holidays at the Glasgow Fair and there was an exodus out of the city that first weekend as people left on holiday. Some of the popular English seaside resorts seemed to become Scottish overseas territories for those two weeks, before it became as easy to visit the Balearics as Blackpool. The Glasgow Fair has effectively died out now as a holiday.

Halloween was, until recently, a holiday far more observed in Scotland than in England. As a child we would go out “guising”, a word that I assume comes from “disguise”, and would be easily recognised today as trick-or-treating. There was also the tradition of “dookin” for apples. In our house it would begin with kneeling on a chair with your head hanging over the back and a fork held between your teeth, tines pointing down. Below you there would be a basin full of water with apples floating around on top. You would try to spear an apple by dropping the fork it one at the right time. This is not as easy as it may sound! Most of the time the fork glances off the apple harmlessly. After some time trying to win an apple this way, exasperation sets in and you kneel at the bowl with your hands behind your back and try to grab one with your teeth, getting soaked in the process. By now you will have guessed that “dookin” means “dunking”. A warning though – do not mix the two forms of dookin as a fork delivered to the back of the head often spoils the party!

When my wife and I moved to England around 10 years ago, we prepared for Halloween as we would in Scotland – a bowl of sweets and another of nuts & fruit behind the door, the TV turned down and an ear out for the doorbell. At the time we were trying to start a family and were feeling well disposed towards children in general (today, with two kids of our own we are a lot less misty-eyed). We remained like that for hours with no ringing. At one point I looked outside to see if our house was subject to some sort of Halloween boycott, but the streets were empty. There were children living nearby, but none of them were anywhere to be seen. Only later did we discover that Halloween was not really celebrated in England. It was seen as a very American thing that novelty manufacturers were trying to promote over here. I’m glad to say, that over the last ten years, Halloween has become a much bigger deal to the English. Now there are hundreds of little Harry Potters and Hermione Grangers roaming the streets, extorting treats as they go, before returning home to gorge themselves on sugar… aah the little darlings.