Scottish Christmas Traditions (& Merry Christmas!)

[Jack Daw]

For several years, I have proudly served as first-footer for a piper buddy and his wife. He's more than a piper buddy, though, as I have known him since high school which was about 35 years ago. I bring a bottle of whisky, a piece of firewood, and sometimes a fruitcake. Anyway, my hair is turning whiter each year, now, so I may not qualify much longer.

[Tobus]

As requested...

Black Bun

This is a very traditional Scottish sweetmeat, eaten with a nip or two of whisky at the Hogmanay New Year festivities, and often given to visitors on New Year's Day. It is different from most fruitcakes because it is baked in a pastry case. It should be made several weeks in advance to give it time to mature properly.

Makes 1 cake

For the pastry:
2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1/2 cup butter
1 tsp baking powder
cold water

For the filling:
4 cups raisins
3 cups currants
1 cup chopped almonds
1-1/2 cups plain (all-purpose) flour
generous 1/2 cup soft light brown sugar
1 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp each ground ginger, ground cinnamon, and ground black pepper
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cream of tartar
1 tbsp brandy
1 egg, beaten, plus extra for glazing
5 tbsp milk

1. First make the pastry. Sift the plain flour into a mixing bowl. Remove the butter from the refrigerator ahead of time and dice it into small cubes. Leave it out of the refrigerator to soften well.
2. Add the cubes of butter to the flour. Rub the butter into the flour with your fingertips until it is the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add the baking powder and mix well. Then add small amounts of cold water, blending it in with a fork, until you can handle the mixture and knead it into a stiff dough.
3. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into a thin sheet. Grease an 8" loaf tin (pan) and line with the thin sheet of dough. Leave enough to cover the top of the cake.
4. Preheat the oven to 225 degrees F. For the filling, put all the dry ingredients together in a dry warm bowl, including the ground spices, and cream of tartar. Mix them together with a spoon until they are thoroughly blended.
5. Stir the brandy and egg into the dry filling mixture and add enough milk to moisten the mixture.
6. Put the filling into the prepared tin and cover with the remaining pastry.
7. Prick all over with a fork and brush with egg. Bake in the preheated oven for about 3 hours. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container.

I found that the pastry part of the recipe was pretty easy and straightforward. But when mixing the filling, I needed a bit more liquid than they called for. So I upped the brandy and milk until it was just gooey enough to mix, and there was no dry ingredients left. And I really had to pack it into the pastry lining pretty tightly with the back of a spoon to get it to fit (and to eliminate air voids).

I won't know how it came out until New Year's, so I make no guarantees on this recipe yet! Here's a photo of the recipe from the book, with pictures. You can see how the final product should look.

[Scotland Forever]

Firstfooters. In Scotland, it was, and still is, the custom for a stranger to enter the house after midnight on New Year's Eve. There were taboos about the luck such a stranger would bring, especially in the days of hospitality to traveling strangers. A fair-haired visitor was considered bad luck in most areas, partly due to fighting between the dark Scots and the fair Norse invaders. However, in Christian times a fair-haired man was considered very lucky providing his name was Andrew (because St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland). The firstfooter must make an offering, or handsel. The offering can be food, drink or fuel for the fire. Rituals which have evolved from this custom are many. An offering of food or drink must be accepted by sharing it with everyone present, including the visitor. Fuel must be placed onto the fire by the visitor with the words "A good New Year to one and all and many may you see." In today's fireless society, the fuel is usually presented as a polished piece of coal, or wood, which can be preserved for the year as an ornament.

Participated in First Footin' in 1999/2000 - was the first guest after Midnight @ a cousin's flat in Edinburgh after the big Millennium celebration on Prince's Street. I hadn't seen him since I left Scotland when I was a bairn. He regaled me with stories as we drank and partied the night away.

It's trully a great experience

[BoldHighlander]

Thanks everyone for sharing such great experiences!

Tobus - thanks for the recipe, another now on my "must try" list!

I use to have very dark (almost black) hair as a youth. As I got older it was still a very dark brown, but when the sunlight hit it, it showed red tint (my beard had strong red tints to it). Now, like Steve, the silver-grey is taking over, and my facial hair is silvery, almost white (we grey early on my mom's side of the family), so I'm afraid I wouldn't qualify as a firstfooter anymore

[Ancienne Alliance]

Thank you for sharing !
Merry Christmas !

Robert & Lady Chrystel

[Bill aka Mole]

Thank you for sharing all of this. It does bring some answers to things that I observed growing up. My father had black hair and was told to leave the house (with a bottle of Scotch and a piece of firewood) by his best friends mother on New Years Eve when I was about 15. She would not let him back into the house until after midnight. At the time, she was likely 80 and I mistakenly thought that she had lost her mind. Now I know about the dark haired visitor on New Years Day.

[Jack Daw]

Here is a bit more on Scottish Christmas traditions, apparently in answer to England's new-found traditions.

This bit from the Dundee Courier, December 22, 1858

AULD YULE, or CHRISTMAS IN SCOTLAND.

IN our part of the country—a lowland county far north—we fix our Christmas according to the Old Style of computing time, viz. on the 6th of January, the English Twelfth-day. The same day is observed in most of the rural districts of Scotland. In the large towns, it is becoming the fashion to observe Christmas on the 25th of December, as in England; but in the country that day is passed over without notice, except, perhaps, by the lairds and gentry, who, having " been south," think it rather a fine thing to affect English customs. It is not, however, the disposition of the Scotch generally to prefer the customs of England, or of any other country, to those which have been endeared to them by the traditions of their own loved land; and in spite of all attempts at innovation, Auld Yule still holds its ground bravely.

The Scotch reviewers, who boasted that the intellectual strength which they brought to the demolition of English bards was sustained simply upon oatmeal, confessed a truth which has a wider and deeper significance than they would, perhaps, have been willing to admit. Oats, which Johnson described with so much unworthy bitterness as "the food of horses in England and of men in Scotland," really play a most important part in all that relates to the social habits and observances of the Scotch. Oatmeal may be said to pervade the social life of Scotland much in the same way that beef pervades that of England, or potatoes that of Ireland. Like beef, too, it comes in as the characteristic fare of Christmas. Oatmeal makes cakes, and bannocks, and brose, and porridge, all the year round; and when Yule comes in his mantle of snow, it makes sowans. With what lively anticipations of delight we used to look forward through weary weeks and weeks to the sowans-drinking on Auld Yule morning! Not that any of us were immoderately fond of sowans, any more than the southerners are of beef; but because the making and the drinking of the beverage at early morn was a grand "ploy," to be followed next day by the assembling of the whole household to the Yule breakfast, and all the doings peculiar to the season. Well do I remember with what anxious solicitude we used to inquire of Eppy (Elspet), the cook, "Hoo the sowans were going on." This would be perhaps a week beforehand, when the sowans had just been steeped in the bowie, which, I may explain, is a cask with one of the ends knocked out. But perhaps I had better explain the sowans as well as the bowie. Well, sowans are made from the husks of the oats. A quantity of these husks, having a considerable portion of meal adhering to them, are placed in a cask with several gallons of water, and are there left for a week or so to ferment. When the liquor begins to froth and become sour, it is ready for use. It is then run off, and boiled until it assumes the consistence of gruel; when it is sweetened with sugar or treacle, and then drank out of bowls, or bickers. There is another kind of sowans, which is made much thicker, and is eaten with milk, like porridge. The "drinking sowans," however, is specially reserved for Yule morning. It is the custom for the cook to wake every body in the house about four or five o'clock, and call them to drink sowans. All the young people dress, and assemble round the kitchen-fire, each with his bicker in hand, waiting to be served. If there be any old or infirm persons in the house, basins of sowans are taken to them in their beds; for every one must taste sowans on Yule morning. It would be considered as much a reproach in Scotland for a person to pass his Yule without drinking sowans, as it is in England for any one not to have a plum-pudding on Christmas Day; and as people in England taste each other's plum-puddings, so in Scotland neighbours exchange "tastes" of their sowans. There is a good deal of rivalry, too, among the sowans-makers; and some Eppy or Jessie will become the talk of the country-side on account of the superiority of her sowans.

In some parts of the Highlands, it is the custom, after the sowans-bickers have been emptied, to rush away to a swing, in which the various members of the family are swung in turn, the youngest having the preference. As the person in the swing approaches the swinger, he calls out, Ei mi tu chal ("I'll eat your kail"); to which the swinger replies, Cha ni u mu chal ("You shan't eat my kail"). This sport passes away the time until daylight, when the players all rush to the door to see what kind of weather Yule has brought. The proverb runs, "A green (or black) Yule makes a fat kirkyard;" meaning, that mild weather at Christmas is not favourable to health. In the northern parts of Scotland, however, it is not often that the earth is seen without a thick robe of snow on Yule morning. I remember, on more than one occasion, going to the door on Yule morning to mark the signs of the weather, and finding the whole side of the house snowed up to the first-floor windows. On one memorable Yule morning, the snow-drift was so dense that we were obliged to use fire-shovels in cutting our way out. The low outhouses, where the cattle and horses were stabled, were completely hid in the huge mountain of drift; and it took the farming men nearly a whole day to dig a passage to the doors through which to carry the poor beasts their food.

In farmhouses, it is the custom on Yule morning for the master to entertain all his servants, together with the members of his own family, to what is termed in the vernacular a "tae brackfast," in contradistinction to the usual matutinal meal of porridge and milk. This meal is greatly enjoyed by the farming men and boys, to whom tea, wheaten bread, and dried haddocks are a rare treat. When the wheaten bread and the haddocks have been demolished, and the tea-pot has been drained of the last drop that can possibly lay any claim to the name of tea, there immediately begins a general reading of fortunes in the tea-grouts left in the cups. The lasses never fail to divine that strangers will arrive during the day; and Jessy the housemaid and Eppy the cook fall into fits of laughter as their fancy is struck by some configuration of tea-grouts resembling a certain Willie or Jamie towards whom they are not unwilling to own that they cherish feelings of a tender nature. The fortune-telling over, a scene occurs something not unlike that which ensued upon Romulus's entertainment to the Sabines; with this difference, that the Sabine lasses were not prepared for it, whereas the Scotch lasses always are. Every lad seizes a lass, and kisses her on the spot without license of mistletoe; nor is any lad content with kissing one lass, but kisses them all round in succession, as fast as he can catch them, and overcome their well-feigned resistance. As the morning advances, the lasses begin to be on the qui vive for the "beggars," the first sound of whose voices singing their Yule songs brings all the inmates scampering to the doors. The "beggars" who visit the farmhouses of Scotland on a Yule morning may be said to correspond to the English "waits," so far as they introduce themselves with songs and music. Here, however, the comparison ends. The Scotch Yule beggars do not seek alms on their own account. They are, in fact, respectable young men belonging to the farmhouses of the neighbourhood, who agree among themselves to go round the country with sacks slung over their shoulders to collect contributions of meal, or money, if they can get it, for some "auld wife" whose scanty means are inadequate to the supply of her humble wants during the rigours of winter. The sons of well-to-do farmers do not think it beneath them to perform this charitable office, particularly as it affords them an opportunity of calling upon and kissing all the bonnie lasses of the neighbourhood. Fine strapping chiels are those beggars, and smartly dressed too; and Eppy, as she drops a handful of meal in their sacks, like the Saxon lef-day, is by no means unwilling to take a good honest kiss in reward of her charity. The song with which the beggars herald their approach is generally a description of the case of the auld wife whose cause they have come to plead. I have a recollection of hearing on a Yule morning something like the following:—

Ye ken auld Tibbie Cruikshank,
That lives doon by the muir;
An honest cra-tur Tibbie is,
But lanesome, auld, and puir.

Then let us beg for Tibbie
A puckle o' your meal,
Or maybe twa or three bawbees,
Or claes will dee as weel."

And then comes a refrain, which is peculiar to many of the northern districts of Scotland, but the meaning of which I have never been able to learn. It recites the various farmhouses which have been visited, and ends with

"And awa' by Soothin toon,"

thus:—

"We've been up by Muiryfauld,
To Seggybum been doon,
And ower to the minister's hoose,
And awa' by Soothin toon."

I may state, however, that the word "toon," or "toun," is generally used to signify a farmhouse and its buildings. Several sets of beggars will visit the house during the morning, and they all get meal or bawbees, and kisses to boot; and they all sing, that in gathering meal for Auld Tibbie, or lizzie, they have been up and down, and here and there,

"And awa' by Soothin toon."

In the country the sports peculiar to Yule are chiefly shooting at a target for prizes; cards (the popular game being "catch the ten"); and amongst the bairns, playing at teetotum for pins. Every Scotch farming-man possesses a gun, in which he takes as much pride as the Swiss mountaineer of a past age took in his bow. He is equally fond of showing his skill in its use at the shooting-matches on Auld-Yule Day. The prizes on these occasions are variously a fat hen, a pig, or, maybe, a silver watch. The match is generally got up in behalf of some poor person, who takes this mode of raffling any little article of property which he may possess.

Dinner is not a feature of Christmas observances in Scotland in the country districts, nor, indeed, to any great extent in the towns. The dinner is better than usual; but there is no distinctive fare, such as roast beef and plum-pudding; and the decoration of houses with evergreens is wholly unknown. In England, we are indebted for these customs to the Church, which originally introduced them as part of the religious observances of the season. In Scotland, however, Christmas is not a festival of the Church. There is no special service, nor, indeed, any service at all, in the churches on Christmas Day; but there is an intimate connection in the minds of the people between the season and the Great Event which it commemorates. Yule in Scotland, like Christmas in England, is a period sacred to good feeling and Christian brotherhood, to the social fore-gathering of families, and the exercise of bountiful charity.

A. H.

Also in the National Magazine, 1858.

I borrowed this from a post made on another website by another poster.

[Lallans]

We had the tradition that animals in the barns, especially horses, would kneel down at midnight on Christmas Eve in honour of the Christ Child, a notion I always found charming in the extreme even though I never quite believed it. I don't know that this is a particularly Scottish tradition, in fact in light of what has already been posted I guess it isn't, but British folks always talked up the kneeling thing big when we where children. Of course this couldn't be tested even by farm children because of the hazard of preventing a visit from Santa Claus....

[macwilkin]

We had the tradition that animals in the barns, especially horses, would kneel down at midnight on Christmas Eve in honour of the Christ Child, a notion I always found charming in the extreme even though I never quite believed it. I don't know that this is a particularly Scottish tradition, in fact in light of what has already been posted I guess it isn't, but British folks always talked up the kneeling thing big when we where children. Of course this couldn't be tested even by farm children because of the hazard of preventing a visit from Santa Claus....

Again, another Ozarks custom documented by Randolph's Ozark Magic & Folklore. Randolph credits the Ulster-Scots & other residents of the British Isles as the origins of Ozarks culture.

T.

[Lallans]

Again, another Ozarks custom documented by Randolph's Ozark Magic & Folklore. Randolph credits the Ulster-Scots & other residents of the British Isles as the origins of Ozarks culture.

T.

Score one for the home tradition. Really, what would the US have done without its Ulster Scots?

(Where I come from, that is known as 'leading with your chin.' )