Hogmanay and Fire

The Edinburgh Festivals

Course 5 · Chapter 6 · Hogmanay and the Winter Festivals

The August festivals draw the headlines, but Edinburgh's other great public event comes in the dark of winter: Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year. It is one of the oldest customs in this course and also one of the newest organised events, since the huge street party of today dates only from the late twentieth century. Alongside it come the fire festivals, which claim ancient roots, and the winter markets, which cause arguments each year. This chapter separates the old customs from the modern events and asks which claims about them can be checked. Names, dates and figures are from general knowledge and flagged "check".

Hogmanay: the Custom

The word

Hogmanay is the Scots name for New Year's Eve and the celebrations around it. Its origin is uncertain, with French, Norse and Gaelic explanations offered (check, and treat any single explanation with caution).

First-footing

The custom that the first person to cross the threshold after midnight brings luck, often carrying coal, shortbread, whisky or black bun, with a tall dark-haired man traditionally preferred (check the details, which vary by region).

Auld Lang Syne

The song associated with Robert Burns, who collected and revised an older Scots song in the 1790s (check). It is sung at New Year gatherings around the world.

Why Hogmanay mattered. After the Reformation, the Church of Scotland discouraged Christmas celebrations, and in many places the New Year became the main midwinter holiday (check how strictly and how long). Christmas Day became a public holiday in Scotland only in 1958, and 26 December in 1974 (check the dates).
Older roots. Some writers link the customs to pre-Christian midwinter rites, but evidence for a direct line is thin, and much of that story was shaped by later folklorists (check).

Edinburgh's Hogmanay

Item (check each)	Detail
Street party	The organised Edinburgh Hogmanay street party began in the early 1990s, with Princes Street closed to traffic, stages and fireworks (check the first year).
A lesson in crowds	The crowd grew until the event needed a ticketed, fenced area and licensing, as large gatherings in many cities do (check).
Torchlight procession	A procession with torches through the Old Town, often linked in popular accounts to Viking imagery, which is a modern theme and not a record of ancient practice (check).
Loony Dook	The New Year's Day swim in the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry, begun in the 1980s as a joke and now a popular event (check the origins).
Scale	Tens of thousands of ticket-holders, and television coverage in other countries (check the figures).

The Fire Festivals

Beltane Fire Festival. A night-time event on Calton Hill on 30 April, begun in 1988, with a procession and performers in costume and body paint, drawing on older Gaelic May Day customs (check the date and the claims about ancestry).
Samhuinn. A fire festival at the end of October that marks the start of winter in the old Celtic year, held in Edinburgh since the 1980s (check).
What they are. Modern community events, run largely by volunteers, that borrow images from older customs. They are not simple survivals of ancient ritual, but neither are they invented from nothing, since Beltane and Samhain are old festival names (check).
The question to ask. As in Chapter 4, "ancient" is a claim to test. The sensible questions are what the old custom was, what survives in record, and what has been added.

Old customs, new events Hogmanay as a household custom is old, Hogmanay as a mass street party is modern, and the torchlight procession is a modern show dressed in older imagery. The fire festivals work in the same way. A good account of any of them separates the three layers: the custom, the revival and the spectacle.

Winter Markets and Arguments

Christmas in the city. Since the late 1990s Edinburgh has hosted a winter market, a funfair and a big wheel in and around Princes Street Gardens and the Mound (check the dates).
The disputes. Residents' groups and campaigners have complained about the use of public gardens by commercial operators, the closure of green space and the fencing-off of public land, while supporters point to the visitors and the revenue (check the cases and the outcomes).
The pattern. It echoes the August arguments about crowds and ownership of the city (Chapter 7), with the difference that winter events keep shops and hotels busy in a quiet season.

A British comparison Compare the Lord Mayor's Show or New Year's Eve in London, and Hogmanay in Aberdeen or Stonehaven, where the Fireballs ceremony swings burning balls through the streets (check the example). Local customs in smaller places often keep a rougher, more participatory character than the ticketed capital event.

Check the details Folk customs attract confident claims about ancient origin. Treat any "this goes back thousands of years" statement as a claim, and check founding dates, crowd figures and the outcomes of disputes against organisers' records, newspaper coverage and council papers.

Exercises

Exercise 1

Explain why Hogmanay was historically more important in Scotland than Christmas, and say what evidence supports the explanation.

→ Solution

Exercise 2

Use the three-layer approach (custom, revival, spectacle) to analyse either the torchlight procession or one of the fire festivals.

→ Solution

Exercise 3

Write a balanced paragraph on the argument over commercial winter markets in public gardens, giving the main points on each side.

→ Solution

Quick Reference

Hogmanay: the Scottish New Year; first-footing; Auld Lang Syne (check)
History: Christmas discouraged after the Reformation; Christmas Day a public holiday in 1958 (check)
Edinburgh: street party from the early 1990s, torchlight procession, Loony Dook (check)
Fire festivals: Beltane from 1988, Samhuinn (check)
The method: separate the custom, the revival and the spectacle