Hogmanay and First-Footing

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The religious and legal history is well documented, as are the dates of the public holidays. The weak points are explanations: of the word itself, of first-footing's dark-haired visitor, and of the age of fire customs. These are often presented as ancient pagan or Viking survivals, but the records usually begin far later.

Why New Year mattered more than Christmas

established Before 1560 Christmas, called Yule in Scots, was celebrated as it was across Catholic Europe. The Reformation changed that: the reformed Church of Scotland regarded such feast days as unscriptural, and in 1640 the Parliament of Scotland abolished the Yule holiday, ordering that all observation of it should end. Although that act was rescinded in 1661, the Kirk's disapproval lasted, and Christmas was a normal working day for most Scots for centuries. Christmas Day became a public holiday only in 1958, and Boxing Day in 1974. The midwinter celebration shifted to New Year. Since the 1980s Christmas has caught up with, or overtaken, Hogmanay in popularity.

Dancing, carols and guisers at midwinter

established The Kirk's campaign against Yule met stubborn resistance, and much of the evidence involves dancing. The dance historian George S. Emmerson, in A Social History of Scottish Dance (1972), cites cases from session records. At Errol in Perthshire in 1594–95 two men and four women confessed to "going about in rings and carrelling" on Yule day. In Aberdeen in 1652 a servant girl was punished for saying that the minister Andrew Cant "spak like an auld fuil" when he preached against Yule, and in 1656 a group of Aberdeen women were charged with dancing and singing carols on Yule day and the Sunday evening after, while others were accused of dancing through the town at night in men's clothes.

established Guisers had a play as well as songs. The Scottish guisers' play, known from its hero as Galoshans (Emmerson's "Goloshen"), was a relative of the English mummers' play, with a combat, a death and a comic doctor who revives the victim. Emmerson records that it was performed at Yule or Hogmanay, that Sir Walter Scott entertained the guisers at Abbotsford on Christmas Eve, and that the play later shifted to Hallowe'en.

established In the Gaelic west Hogmanay was a night for dancing. The minister Norman Macleod (1783–1862), writing as "Finlay the Piper" in a Gaelic magazine about 1830, described a West Highland Hogmanay of his youth. After the songs a woman dressed as a housekeeper, with keys jingling at her side, sang mouth music and danced Cailleach an Dùdain (the old wife of the mill-dust); then came the Black Sluggard, the Goat Dance, "Weave the Gown" and "the Thorny Croft". Emmerson treats these as old dramatic dances that had almost disappeared by 1900. A memoir of Macleod's family records 18th-century New Year dancing at Drumdrissaig in Knapdale that always ended with the Country Bumpkin. In Shetland, according to Samuel Hibbert (1822), the fiddles greeted Yule morning with the tune "Day-dawn", and on Papa Stour the festive evening could bring the island's sword dance.

traditional In later versions of Cailleach an Dùdain an old woman is struck down and then revived limb by limb, and Emmerson saw in it a remnant of an ancient death-and-resurrection ritual. That is his interpretation; the dance is first mentioned only around 1800, by Alexander Campbell.

Where does "Hogmanay" come from?

established Nobody knows. The earliest recorded form is hagnonayse, in a Latin entry from the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1443. The first Scots record is hagmonay, in the records of Elgin in 1604, where the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue defines it as a New Year's Eve gift and the cry used to ask for one. The most often cited theory links it to old French words for a New Year's gift, such as aguillanneuf, from "l'an neuf", the new year. Others propose a Norse root, linked to rhymes about hill-men and trolls, or a Gaelic one. The dictionary calls the origin obscure.

First-footing

established The best-known Hogmanay custom is first-footing. Just after midnight, the first person to cross a friend's or neighbour's threshold brings gifts that symbolise good luck for the year ahead: coal for warmth, shortbread or black bun for food, whisky for good cheer. Traditionally a tall, dark-haired man was the luckiest first-foot.

traditional The reason usually given for the dark-haired preference is that a fair-haired stranger at the door recalled the Viking raiders of the past. No early source supports this explanation; it is a modern folk explanation.

Hogmanay food and drink

established The folklorist F. Marian McNeill, in The Scots Kitchen (1929), records the food of the season as she knew it. Her calendar of festival dishes lists for Hogmanay "cakes and kebbuck" (oatcake farls and cheese), "sugared bread and sweet cakes" (shortbread, black bun, currant loaf and ankerstock gingerbread), oranges, the het pint in Edinburgh and Glasgow, sowens in Aberdeen, and Atholl brose, which she calls a favourite drink for first-footers in the Highlands. Shortbread, she writes, was "invariably" provided for first-footers. The midwinter holidays as a whole were the Daft Days, running from Christmas Eve to Auld Handsel Monday, the first Monday of the New Year by the old calendar, the subject of Robert Fergusson's poem of that name.

established The het pint was hot ale sweetened and spiced with nutmeg, thickened with beaten eggs and laced with whisky, then poured from one vessel to another until smooth. McNeill gives Meg Dods's recipe and quotes a note describing it as the "celebrated New Year's morning Het Pint of Edinburgh and Glasgow", carried through the streets in a copper kettle. The same note says that in Aberdeen half-boiled sowens, a dish of fermented oat husks, took its place. McNeill adds that the het pint was also drunk on the night before a wedding and at a birth. Few people make it now.

traditional Black bun is a rich, spiced fruit cake baked inside a plain pastry case. McNeill states that it was the old Scottish Twelfth Cake, moved to Hogmanay when the Reformers banned Christmas and Twelfth Night. That fits the history of the Kirk's hostility to Christmas, and Sir John Sinclair in 1782 glossed "bun" as an old word for plum cake or Twelfth cake. But no record shows the transfer happening, so it is best treated as a likely explanation, not a fact. Meg Dods (1826) noted that buns weighing from four to sixteen pounds or more were sent from Edinburgh's bakers across Britain, so the bun was already a well-known Scottish speciality. McNeill describes the spiced currant loaf as a cheaper substitute in households where black bun was too rich or too dear.

traditional McNeill also believed that the large, round shortbread cake with a notched edge descends from the ancient Yule bannock, its notches symbolising the rays of the sun. That is her interpretation, not a documented line of descent.

established Children went guising at Hogmanay as well as at Hallowe'en. McNeill notes that oatcake farls with a slice of the Yule cheese were "commonly given" to them, and an Aberdeenshire housewife told her of making pots of pulled treacle "teasing-candy" for the village children at Hogmanay. In Edinburgh the streets leading to the Tron Kirk, where crowds gathered to see in the New Year, were lined with barrows selling oranges, which McNeill describes as a modest Hogmanay handsel, or gift.

Auld Lang Syne

established At midnight, people across Scotland and beyond sing "Auld Lang Syne", Robert Burns's version of an older Scots song, standing in a circle and linking arms, traditionally crossing them at the start of the final verse before rushing into the centre together.

Fire at New Year

established Some towns mark New Year with fire. In Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, people swing blazing balls of wire filled with flammable material through the streets as the Old Town House bell rings in the new year, then throw them into the harbour; about 12,000 people watched in 2007–08. In Burghead, Moray, the Burning of the Clavie, a burning barrel carried through the town, is held on 11 January, the old New Year's Eve under the Julian calendar.

established In the 19th century several fishing and industrial towns marked the New Year with burning tar-barrels. The historian Callum G. Brown, in Up-helly-aa (1998), records that young men at Campbeltown carried them through the streets at Old New Year (12 January) in the 1860s, until the custom ended in 1880. In Lerwick, Shetland, which kept Yule and New Year on the old dates of 5 and 12 January, masked guizers fired guns and dragged blazing tar-barrels along Commercial Street from the early 1840s. The town council swore in special constables every year, and in 1846 the crowd chased more than forty of them into the town house. Lerwick's tar-barrels died out in the 1870s and its New Year moved to 1 January in 1879. The revels' successor, Up Helly Aa, is held at the end of January.

shared Brown argues that tar-barrels, torches and fireballs belonged to the new fishing and textile towns of the 19th century, which had the barrels and tar to burn, rather than to ancient rural custom. He accepts that bonfires, guizing and torches at New Year are much older in Scotland. Moray kirk sessions condemned the burning of torches at Hogmanay between the 1650s and 1730s.

traditional Fire customs like these are often described as ancient pagan survivals. Their documented histories are usually much shorter, and claims of prehistoric origin are not supported by records.

Edinburgh's Hogmanay

established The great street party is recent. Edinburgh's crowds had long gathered informally around the Tron Kirk, but the organised street party began only in 1993, when the focus moved to Princes Street. In 1996 about 300,000 people attended, and the 1996–97 celebrations were recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's largest New Year party, with about 400,000. Numbers have since been capped for safety. Bad weather has forced cancellations several times, including in 2003–04, 2006–07 and 2024, and the pandemic cancelled the events in 2020 and 2021.

• The word "Hogmanay" was first recorded in Yorkshire in 1443.
• The first Scots record of the word is from Elgin in 1604.
• Scotland's Parliament abolished the Yule holiday in 1640.
• Christmas Day was not a public holiday in Scotland until 1958.
• Coal, shortbread and whisky are traditional first-footing gifts.
• Stonehaven's fireballs are thrown into the harbour at the end of the ceremony.
• Burghead's Burning of the Clavie is held on 11 January, the old New Year's Eve.
• Edinburgh's street party only began in 1993.
• Lerwick in Shetland celebrated New Year on 12 January, by the old calendar, until 1879.
• The het pint, hot ale with eggs and whisky, was carried through Edinburgh and Glasgow in copper kettles on New Year's morning.
• Black bun was baked in a pastry case, and Edinburgh bakers sent buns of sixteen pounds or more across Britain.
• In 1652 an Aberdeen servant girl was punished for saying her minister "spak like an auld fuil" when he preached against Yule.
• West Highland Hogmanay parties once included dramatic dances such as the Goat Dance and Cailleach an Dùdain, the old wife of the mill-dust.

• Do not present any single origin for the word "Hogmanay" as proven.
• Do not say the dark-haired first-foot tradition comes from fear of Vikings.
• Do not call Edinburgh's street party an ancient tradition; it began in 1993.
• Do not call New Year fire festivals prehistoric without evidence; tar-barrelling, for example, is recorded mainly from the 19th century.
• Do not state as fact that black bun was the old Twelfth Cake moved to Hogmanay; it is a plausible explanation without a direct record.
• Do not present the idea that notched shortbread symbolises the sun's rays as documented history.
• Do not present Cailleach an Dùdain or the guisers' play as proven survivals of pagan ritual; that is an interpretation.
• Do not say Christmas was illegal in Scotland until 1958; the Yule holiday was abolished in 1640 and the act rescinded in 1661, but Christmas was not a public holiday until 1958.