Hogmanay 2015

When I was small, my grandmother used to refer to New Year’s Day as ‘Hogmanay’. I figured this was one of the idiosyncrasies of her Scottish roots, but never really questioned what the term meant. It��was just another word for New Year’s, like ‘Yule’ was another word for ‘Christmas’, and ‘shortbread’ was another word for ‘cookie’.

Well, it turns out that none of these are synonyms, and mistaking them as such strips away a lot of rich diversity, history, and meaning. ��A cookie can be mediocre, dry, and any of a variety of flavours, but shortbread is pure ambrosia.

Hogmanay is not quite the same as New Years Day, apparently. While New Years Eve in North America seems to be a fairly standard drink-toast-fireworks-bed combination of events,��Hogmanay is full of traditions and contradictions. Even the name is rife with mystery: it may be Manx, it may be French, it may be Norse, no one’s quite sure. Accepted spelling ranges from Hogmanay (which I’ll use, because that’s the version my grandma used) to Hanginay to��Hogmynae to��Huggeranohni. The H is pretty standard, but from there on it, it’s just a grab-bag of vowels.

There’s a host of traditions that are associated with Hogmanay, including first-footing, in which the first person over the threshold of a house in the new year gives a gift to bring luck to the homeowner. ��Traditional items include bread, salt, coal, coins, or whiskey, and different items bring different kinds of luck. I’ve always been fond of the association between the New Year and Janus, the Roman God of Doorways, plus who doesn’t like random gifts of foodstuff? Apparently, the preferred first-footer is a tall, dark gentleman – welcome, Mr. Darcy*!

There’s also lots of whiskey-drinking,��bagpipes, dancing, steak pie, a multitude of��fire-based hijinks which include��swinging��fireballs of chicken wire or fire twirling or fire juggling or almost anything set on fire… I mean, really, it sounds like a blast.����In the area where my grandma’s family came from, there’s been a revival in saining, which is a rite to protect the house by sprinkling blessed water everywhere. ��The water is to be collected from ‘a dead and living ford’ – a place where both the living and the dead cross – which I think is pretty poetic.

I’d hoped to see a few Scottish locations that are��considered to be ‘dead and living fords’, but Google hasn’t been particularly helpful; when I type in ‘dead living ford’, all I get back are pages about Rob Ford. It’s enough to make anyone reach for a restorative whiskey.

Let me take this opportunity to wish you a happy 2015! We���ll tak’ a cup o��� kindness yet,��for auld lang syne.

*Yes, I know Mr. Darcy is English. He can still visit.