And so, with Christmas over begins the countdown to Hogmanay…New Year’s Eve to all but the Scots. Although I’ve spent more than 2/3’s of my life away from my homeland…maybe even change some of my mother-tongue to accomodate those who might not understand it…it will always be Hogmanay to me. I don’t know if it’s even the same at home, these days, as it was when I was a child and, if not, we’ve lost something of our tradition, a weel-loved holiday if you like.
About now, years ago, my mother would be preparing. Every corner of the house would be poked and prodded, cleaned until it couldn’t be any cleaner. She was a houseproud woman at any time but for Hogmanay everything had to be shining, gleaming, smelling of lavender floor and furniture polish following their scrubbing. Carpets (especially if they were what I now know as throw-rugs) would be put over the clothes lines and beaten, vacuumed. Newspapers laid over the newly cleaned floors so they would not have to be done again. The shopping gotten in…a bottle of sherry, bottle of port, bottle of ginger wine or raspberry cordial for the bairns, maybe a bottle of whiskey for Dad and other male First-Footers or visitors, a few bottles of beer. Wheels of Gouda, shortbread fingers and Petticoat Tails, Madeira cake, Black Bun (we actually never had Black Bun probably because nobody in our house liked it). Mum would often buy new carpets (the throw rugs) for Hogmanay, along with new cushion covers, sometimes new curtains. Tradition has it that everything that needed or had to be done was done before midnight began to chime…that included handyman repairs, all bills paid, nothing left undone before the new year started for “whatever is left undone will never get done the following year”. I hated that adage…usually meant, when I was old enough, I had to do whatever ironing needed done from the last piece of laundry to be washed and dried and to this day…from then…I loathe ironing. I remember one year in particular…I was probably about 15yrs. old. Mum wanted a glass shelf above the bathtub so it was bought and just waiting for Dad to install it. Hogmanay arrives, about 8pm. that night and Mum’s panicking because the shelf is still in the box so she gets on Dad’s case. Now, my father…God love him…was not a handy man. He tried but it just wasn’t him though that didn’t stop Mum trying to make into one. That shelf had to go up before midnight. Dad gets the shelf, brackets, hand tools and climbs into the tub. Half an hour to an hour later while we are waiting for him to come forth with a “tah-dah!”…a crash, shattering glass followed by “OH…SUFFER!” then silence. Three of us ran to the bathroom, already knowing what we’d see. Sure enough…two bracket holes in the wall, brackets and shards of glass in the tub, Dad fuming and Mum livid. It worked…I think that was the last time Mum asked Dad to do anything like this…and he never offered.
My earliest recollection of this grand night was probably when I was about six or seven years old. We lived in what here would be called a cold-water walk-up…a tenement. Two rooms, a ‘loabby’ (vestibule of sorts). The main room had a bed recess with a sofa bed in it for the parents while my sister and I had the other room…the only bedroom. The main room also served as kitchen with sink, stove, dining table. Both rooms had fireplaces and during the festive season, usually both fires were kept blazing. The Christmas tree would be in our bedroom, on a little table by the window. And, on Hogmanay, Mum and Dad would get dressed in finery ready to welcome any First Footer stopping by after midnight. We would be in our jammies, dressing gown and slippers and we’d keep running to the bedroom window to look out on the street…a steep hill leading directly from the city centre streets. There was a cobbled walkway from the hill’s sidewalk back into the two big tenement buildings but on the pavement end of the walkway was a big hall…The Progress Hall. I have no idea what it was for originally, what it started out as…maybe a church for it did have a tall steeple. Almost every Saturday night there would be dances held there, complete with band…no DJ! On such nights, if we had been up at Gran’s with the rest of the family, my sister and I would run ahead of our parents to peek through cracks in one of the hall’s wooden doors. Never saw much…maybe a couple of pairs of legs jigging by but we could hear the band. We could also hear it from our bedroom window. But on Hogmanay, we’d run back and forward to see if it was ‘letting out’, listen to the roll of drums, the clash of cymbals, the hilarity of attendees, while watching and waiting for the crowds heading home, to friends, family, parties etc. from the City Square.
Most other events such as dances would end by around 11pm. and revellers would be seen hurrying down side-streets to converge on the City Square. A huge Christmas tree would have been erected there for the holiday, the city chaplain and several dignitaries would be waiting on a newly erected platform and before midnight, December 31st. the square would be awash with townspeople, shoulder to shoulder…and some on top of other’s shoulders! Often some young lad who had had too much to drink would try to climb the tree. A few minutes before the stroke of midnight the chaplain would give the invocation, folk waiting with baited breath for the rockets to explode from the Caird Hall, singing Auld Lang Syne and then everyone would shake hands, kiss, hug, yelling out to all and sundry “Happy New Year!!” The throngs would start to disperse and head for wherever the fun was about to begin. When I was a child, that would be about three days of merriment…not necessarily drunkeness, merriment with eating, singing, dancing. Party central was at almost every other home and all were welcome…Scots have no idea of what a stranger is on Hogmanay. And I hope that, at least, still applies.
And there Sis and I would be, now with Mum and Dad looking out the same window, over our heads listening to singing, shouting, laughter as groups and groups wandered…or staggered!…their way up the hill. I remember my cousins stopping in at our house on their way to their own parents (and however many other houses they could make before they had just ‘had it’!) One year I remember the two brothers, James and John with some of their friends, knocking on the door a few minutes after the striking of the hour. Any other time they would just walk in but not on Hogmanay…you knocked, although a First Foot was technically the first foot in any house after midnight, January 1st. The First Foot in a home after midnight (and that sometimes could be late into the next day or a day or two into January) is what brings luck to the household. It should be male, tall, dark and time was when we couldn’t leave the house until we had had a First Foot, first. If that didn’t happen the first hours of the new year then someone from the household would step out, knock and then be invited to enter. They wouldn’t let me have that role, regardless though there were times my younger sister did. I was a redhead…redhead’s were “not lucky” so the whole point of that exercise would be lost for me to be the First Foot, no matter how I volunteered! ”Nah, nah..no’ you!” I’ve seen times when the paper laddie would be brought into the house just so we could get out that day. They also had to be carrying a ‘first foot’…a hanseling of the house and those in it. A bottle of something, maybe, but tradition had it to be salt, a piece of coal also. Earlier in the evening of Hogmanay Mum and Dad would often take us down town where stalls lined the city streets. Those stalls sold all manner of little things for ‘first footing presents’ but mostly calendars, whole kippers (kippered herring) dressed in crepe skirts, hats, whatever but, of course, by midnight I think all the stalls had closed and the owners gone home to prepare for their own parties. People came and went all night long but, eventually, we were sent to bed to be ready for the next day. Dad had no siblings living anywhere close, Mum had three sisters and her mother so each year one of the sister’s would have New Year’s Day dinner at their home…that meant the other sisters, their husbands, children, boy/girlfriends of the children old enough to be dating, often friends of their children, friends of the adults, neighbours (that was a PC move, often-times…lolol! That way nobody could or would complain about the noise next door!) and Granny. Dinner was home-made soup, steak pie, potatoes, brussel sprouts, carrots, trifle for dessert then cheese, shortbread, cake. Following dinner the party would begin…music, dancing, singing, everyone taking their turn. Including the extended family, not many of them were drinkers…usually the New Year (the generalised name for January 1st (2nd and 3rd, too!) was the one time the menfolk would imbibe. The women…barely at all. A little sherry or port that would last all night, maybe for some a “snowball”…Advocaat and lemonade. And not even the men could get worse for wear because by the time the party was over the buses had all gone to the depot and walking was the transport (often they even had to carry the littlest child who was already sound asleep). Back then, there was more than just New Year’s Day off work so, next day, it would be to another aunt’s or at our house and we’d start all over again. After that, it was weekends until everyone had taken their turn hosting a New Year event. Depending upon how large a family, that could run up to at least Valentine’s Day!
I’ve spent many Hogmanay’s in as many different parts of the world or this country and never have I seen New Year’s celebrated as the Scots do with ‘no door closed to anyone’, especially “New Year’s Eve”. It’s been said there is only one place one should be that night and that’s Scotland. I’d have to agree even though it’s been many Hogmanay’s gone since I was. I don’t even know any ex-pat Scot who doesn’t declare, that night, “och, next year I have to be at home..” even though most never manage.
And I can still see Dad, a very quiet man…reader just like myself…never had a lot to say and certainly was loathe to ever perform in public except at the New Year. He had a really good voice when he could be convinced, though, and his two favourite songs to sing for his guests were “Danny Boy” and “Rose of Tralee”…Irish songs of all things! Then, one year, as he began we recognised that this was a different song, one we’d never heard anywhere. Started out rather mournful, I was sure we would all end up in tears. Dad cleared his throat, serious look on his face. This is how it went:
“Please don’t take away the baby’s cradle
We’ve had it for six months or more;
Please don’t take away the baby’s cradle
……orthecatwillhaveit’skittensonthefloor….”
Hahahahahahaha! And the room full of family, friends, kids and neighbours dropped their jaws…a couple of seconds of absolute silence and then we all howled. The hankies ready for tears tucked back inside pockets, handbags, up sleeves. And Dad sat there with his droll smile, puffing on his pipe.
In my younger days we always had a Hogmanay Party…be it in the US, Guam, Spain, Italy…and the minute we heard the clock chime midnight, on would go a stack of albums (records, folks!) pipes and drums, of course. The windows were already opened wide to the walls and the volume cranked up. I never got through those first minutes of the year without tears or my thoughts and heart flying homeward to be with my ain folk. No matter where I was, what the hour where I happened to be living at any given time, a glass was…is…raised the minute my clock on the wall hits 6pm, 7pm…and I project homeward where the bells are ringing in the new year. I always miss the country of my birth, have always missed my family there but never more than on Hogmanay for, besides being a time of looking forward to a new year with hopes, dreams, of happier days, better health for those I love it’s a time of looking backward ‘tae the year that’s awa’…” with it’s joys, sorrows, trials, tribulations, gratitude, challenges, achievements. And the toasts…”Here’s tae the year that’s awa…”; “Lang may yer lum reek..” Hogmanay is probably the most sentimental, nostalgic, day of the year running the gamut of emotions in every Scottish heart wherever it beats.
Whatever this year of 2008 has brought you and yours I wish you blessings, joy, peace and health in the year to come.
) is concerned, I decided by the age of thirty that if I was going to write one I needed it to be something of substance, not fluff. But to do that I felt I needed “life experience”…of which I didn’t think I’d had much. Some years after that…and for a number following…I certainly got the experiences, more than I had bargained for and, as such, put me in a place where I had not the time or desire to put them to paper. Back to “someday”. Now, there is a different take on one of those experiences…it has become it’s own blog. The reason I inteded to write it at all, in the first place, was to encourage others who might find themselves in a similar situation (although I fervently hope not) and have somewhere where the support and encouragement is without charge or fee. Thanks to blogdumps…again…I have been able to do this so if it helps even one person, I’m fulfilling a mission of sorts.