Hogmanay is the Scottish celebration of New Year’s Eve, and for centuries it was the biggest festival in the Scottish year by a considerable margin — bigger than Christmas, which barely happened at all.
Why Christmas lost
The Scottish Reformation of 1560 took a dim view of Christmas as a Catholic invention with no scriptural warrant. It was suppressed, and the suppression stuck for an extraordinarily long time: Christmas Day did not become a public holiday in Scotland until 1958, and Boxing Day not until 1974.
For four centuries, then, Scots worked on Christmas Day and put their midwinter feasting, drinking and gift-giving into New Year instead. Scotland still has two public holidays for it — 1 and 2 January — where England has one.
First-footing
The central custom. The first person to cross your threshold after midnight sets the household’s luck for the year, and tradition is specific about who it should be: a tall, dark-haired man, arriving with gifts.
The gifts are symbolic — coal for warmth, shortbread or black bun for food, salt for flavour, and a dram of whisky for good cheer. A fair-haired first-foot was traditionally unlucky, on the widely repeated theory that a blond stranger at your door in medieval Scotland was probably a Viking.
People then move between houses through the small hours, and the first-footing rounds can run until dawn.
Auld Lang Syne
Sung at midnight across the English-speaking world, and written down by Robert Burns in 1788 from an older Scots folk song. The title means roughly “old times gone by”.
There is a correct way to do the arms, and nearly everyone gets it wrong. You join hands with your neighbours in a normal fashion for the verses; only at the final verse — “And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere” — do you cross your arms and take the hands of the people beside you. Crossing arms from the start is a common English error and a reliable source of Scottish amusement.
Edinburgh
Edinburgh‘s Hogmanay is one of the largest New Year celebrations in the world, running over several days: a torchlight procession through the Old Town, a ticketed street party along Princes Street, concerts, and fireworks fired from the castle rock. Tens of thousands attend and tickets sell out well in advance.
The Loony Dook on 1 January — plunging into the freezing Firth of Forth at South Queensferry — is the traditional way to regret the previous evening.
Elsewhere in Scotland
Fire features heavily. Stonehaven holds a fireball ceremony, in which people swing blazing wire cages of burning material around their heads while walking down the High Street. Comrie has a flambeaux procession. Both are considerably older than any health and safety legislation, and are conducted with great care and no small amount of nerve.