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Nowhere else in Britain is the arrival of the New Year celebrated so wholeheartedly as in Scotland.

Throughout Scotland, the preparations for greeting the New Year start with a minor “spring-cleaning”. Brass and silver must be glittering and fresh linen must be put on the beds. No routine work may be left unfinished; stockings must be darned, tears mended, clocks wound up, musical instruments tuned, and pictures hung straight. In addition, all outstanding bills are paid, overdue letters written and borrowed books returned. At least, that is the idea!
Most important of all, there must be plenty of good things to eat.
Innumerable homes “reek of celestial grocery” – plum puddings and currant buns, spices and cordials, apples and lemons, tangerines and toffee. In mansion and farmhouse, in suburban villa and city tenement, the table is spread with festive fare. Essential to Hogmanay are “cakes and kebbuck”
(oatcakes and cheese), shortbread, and either black bun or currant loaf.
There are flanked with bottles of wine and the “mountain dew” that is the poetic name for whisky.

Holidays and traditions in English – speaking countries.

In the cities and burghs, the New Year receives a communal welcome, the traditional gathering-place being the Mercat Cross, the hub and symbol of the old burgh life. In Edinburgh, however, the crowd has slid a few yards down the hill from the Mercat Cross to the Tron Kirk – being lured thither, no doubt, by the four-faced clock in the tower. As the night advances, Princes Street becomes as thronged as it normally is at noon, and there is growing excitement in the air. Towards midnight, all steps turn to the Tron Kirk, where a lively, swaying crowd awaits “the Chaplin o’ the
Twal” (the striking of 12 o’clock). As the hands of the clock in the tower approach the hour, a hush falls on the waiting throng, the atmosphere grows tense, and then suddenly there comes a roar from a myriad throats. The bells forth, the sirens scream – the New Year is born!

Many families prefer to bring in the New Year at home, with music or dancing, cards or talk. As the evening advances, the fire is piled high – for the brighter the fire, the better the luck. The members of the household seat themselves round the hearth, and when the hands of the clock approach the hour, the head of the house rises, goes to the main door, opens it wide, and holds it thus until the last stroke of midnight has died away. Then he shuts it quietly and returns to the family circle. He has let the Old Year out and the New Year in. now greetings and small gifts are exchanged, glasses are filled – and already the First-Footers are at the door.

The First-Footer, on crossing the threshold, greets the family with
“A gude New Year to ane and a’!” or simply “A Happy New Year!” and pours out a glass from the flask he carries. This must be drunk to the dregs by the head of the house, who, in turn, pours out a glass for each of his visitors. The glass handed to the First-Footer himself must also be drunk to the dregs. A popular toast is:

“Your good health!”

The First-Footers must take something to eat as well as to drink, and after an exchange of greetings they go off again on their rounds.

ST. VALENTINE’S DAY – FEBRUARY 14

I’ll be your sweetheart, if you will be mine,

All of my life I’ll be your Valentine …

It’s here again, the day when boys and girls, sweethearts and lovers, husbands and wives, friends and neighbours, and even the office staff will exchange greetings of affections, undying love or satirical comment. And the quick, slick, modern way to do it is with a Valentine card.

There are all kinds, to suit all tastes, the lush satin cushions, boxed and be-ribboned, the entwined hearts, gold arrows, roses, cupids, doggerel rhymes, sick sentiment and sickly sentimentality – it’s all there.
The publishers made sure it was there, as Mr Punch complained, “there weeks in advance!”

Holidays and traditions in English – speaking countries.

In his magazine, Punch, as long ago as 1880 he pointed out that no sooner was the avalanche of Christmas cards swept away than the publishers began to fill the shops with their novel valentines, full of “Hearts and
Darts, Loves and Doves and Floating Fays and Flowers”.

It must have been one of these cards which Charles Dickens describes in Pickwick Papers. It was “a highly coloured representation of a couple of human hearts skewered together with an arrow, cooking before a cheerful fire” and “superintending the cooking” was a “highly indelicate young gentleman in a pair of wings and nothing else”.

In the last century, sweet-hearts of both sexes would spend hours fashioning a homemade card or present. The results of some of those painstaking efforts are still preserved in museums. Lace, ribbon, wild flowers, coloured paper, feathers and shells, all were brought into use. If the aspiring (or perspiring) lover had difficulty in thinking up a message or rhyme there was help at hand. He could dip into the quiver of Love or
St. Valentine’s Sentimental Writer, these books giving varied selections to suit everyone’s choice. Sam Weller, of Pick wick Papers fame, took an hour and a half to write his “Valentine”, with much blotting and crossing out and warnings from his father not to descend to poetry.

The first Valentine of all was a bishop, a Christian martyr, who before the Romans put him to death sent a note of friendship to his jailer’s blind daughter.

The Christian Church took for his saint’s day February 14; the date of an old pagan festival when young Roman maidens threw decorated love missives into an urn to be drawn out by their boy friends.

A French writer who described how the guests of both sexes drew lots for partners by writing down names on pieces of paper noted this idea of lottery in 17th century England. “It is all the rage,” he wrote.

But apparently to bring the game into a family and friendly atmosphere one could withdraw from the situation by paying a forfeit, usually a pair of gloves.

One of the older versions of a well-known rhyme gives the same picture:

The rose is red, the violets are blue,

The honey’s sweet and so are you.

Thou art my love and I am thine.

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