Scottish Highland Christmas Traditions and Holiday food.

[davidlpope]

You need to remember that Presbyterian Scotland regarded Christ Mass as a Roman Catholic festival of no relevance. (The Puritans in England even abolished Christmas during their "reign".) So, in my young day in the 40s/50s, most people worked on Christmas day as usual. The modern version of Father Christmas came in the late 19th century and the idea of Christmas trees had come from Germany with Prince Albert. New Year has always been a bigger thing in Scotland and, in the Highlands, can be celebrated again on January 12th in recognition of the change to the Gregorian calendar!
I'm interested in the stocking hanging - where else but on the end of the bed??
Alan

Many of these Presbyterian traditions carried over into the colonies. For example, an Anglican priest writing before the American Revolution in his diary describes how the Scotch-Irish here in the Mecklenburg region held their militia drill on Christmas Day as a deliberate poke at his Christmas sensibilities. At least as late as 1899 the southern Presbyterian Church explicitly denounced Christmas as a popish invention.