Hogmanay: All about Scottish new year celebrations - and second bank holiday

The event, which begins at 6pm, ends with a fiery finale underneath Edinburgh Castle between 8.30pm and 9pm. It starts the build-up to a holiday which outstrips any other in the Scottish calendar - Hogmanay.

Where does Hogmanay come from?

Various ancient customs are incorporated into modern-day Hogmanay. The Gaelic Samhain festival for the solstice and the Viking and pagan Yule festival are all ingredients in our Christmas and New Year traditions, as is the Romans' Saturnalia.

The word came into common currency after Mary, Queen of Scots returned to Scotland from France in 1561, and so there’s a strong school of thought which says that the word comes from a northern French dialect - the word hoginane, which means "gala day".

However, this is not clear, as the word come come from the Scandinavian word hoggo-nott, which means "yule” - and it also could be derived from the Anglo-Saxon “haleg monath” meaning holy month.

But what is certain, however, is that Hogmanay developed into a three-day feast, banishing the darkness with large fires and eating food from the autumn harvest. As with many cultures' traditions for this time of year, it marks the moment that the days beginning to lengthen and therefore the road back to spring, sun, and renewal. There’s an argument to say that it should be held at the time of the solstice; why it is not is another fact that has been lost during the passage of time.

Yuletide was originally a Germanic festival that started at the winter solstice and lasted for more than a week. It was folded into Christmas as Christianity spread - and perhaps Hogmanay’s position at the end of Yuletide could lead to the Scandinavian origin of the word being the theory with the most traction.

Hogmanay and Christmas

Hogmanay's importance grew in the Civil War era and under the rule of Oliver Cromwell. The feeling among many protestants was that Christmas had become too debauched, and that a month of prayer was wanted instead of eating and drinking.

A law was passed to ban Christmas in 1642, before the Civil War and when King Charles - who signed it off - was still on the throne. This ban did fit in with Cromwell's views as he believed that the Church of England was too similar to the Catholic Church - and he despised Catholicism's perceived decadence and corruption.

Presbyterians in Scotland had banned Christmas in 1640, for similar reasons. However, under Cromwell's protectorate Parliament went further and doubled down by banning Christmas, Easter and Whitsun celebrations, including in people's own homes.

While England's seasonal focus was Christmas, the Scots were to a degree able to point to Hogmanay as being separate to Christmas and continue celebrating it - almost as a loophole. The Restoration of the monarchy in 1660 saw the Christmas ban repealed, and it was also scrapped in Scotland 26 years later. But Hogmanay for many in Scotland kept its primacy over Christmas Day for years.

The second bank holiday

The tired joke - most often made by the English - about the January 2 bank holiday, which is peculiar to Scotland, is that the Scots need an extra day to get over the new year hangovers. However, despite its current fixture in the calendar, the January 2 bank holiday was only introduced in 1973.