TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Hernando Today

A Hogmanay Celebration: Weather Permitting

ADVERTISEMENT

By SUE QUIGLEY

Published: December 31, 2007

While many Americans are popping champagne corks, attending gala parties and watching the ball drop from Times Square in New York, another, much older New Year's Eve celebration takes place in many towns, cities and villages in Scotland.
Called Hogmanay (oge maidne, Gaelic for 'new morning'), it surpasses Christmas for many Scots as the most important holiday of the year. It's a celebration of our annual festival of drink and exuberance.
"Scottish people," wrote the poet Edwin Muir, "drink spasmodically and intensely, for the sake of a momentary, but complete, release, whereas the English like to bathe and puddle about bucolically in a mild puddle of beer."
In 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson described a typical New Year in Edinburgh: "Singly or arm-in-arm, some speechless, others noisy and quarrelsome, the votaries of the New Year go meandering in and out, cannoning one against another and, now and then, one falls and lies as he has fallen."
And us Scots like to party. It's the inalienable right of all Scots to join with compatriots and imbibe themselves into oblivion.
My own memories of New Year's Eve in prebreathalyser days are of long forays in the countryside along snow or icebound roads to "first-foot" at guaranteed parties, laced with alcohol, at every stop. Nowadays to go any distance in a car is considered positively anti-social.
First-footers were always welcome, and if a dark-haired stranger bearing a bottle of malt whisky and a lump of coal was the first across your threshold, you could count on good luck for the whole of the year to come.
Gifts of whisky, oatcakes, shortbread or a confection known as the Scots Bun — something like a rich, moist fruit cake which has been sodden with Calvados, brandy and rum for a year or more would be exchanged. Smoked salmon, trout, grouse, scones, mince pies and haggis were also favorites.
Edinburgh is the place to be on Hogmanay. It's THE night when more than 200,000 revelers crowd into the elegant Georgian center of the Scottish capital to enjoy a party phenomenon.
The streets will be jam-packed with bodies swathed in tartan — the crowd swaying backwards and forwards, their lips blue with the cold as they try to recall the words of 'Flower of Scotland' — Scotland's national anthem. Bagpipes will be as popular as ever subverting them with electronic accompaniment attracting young audiences.
It's the world's biggest New Year's party with a festival of singing, dancing and making merry in the streets usually lasting until lunchtime on New Year's Day.
Well, sometimes, weather permitting.
For the last couple of years, Hogmanay has been blown away.
Literally!
For the past two years, all street parties in Scotland have had to be canceled at the last moment due to high winds and torrential rain. Seventy-mile-an-hour winds blew barriers to the ground and stonework crashing from buildings endangering the safety of the revelers.
It certainly grabbed the headlines then, and now, as New Year's 2008 approaches for Edinburgh is facing a crisis as ticket sales slump with only a few days to go.
The organizers are inevitably cautious until they see the weather forecast. Behind the scenes, I am sure there are tensions and anxieties about the event's future. And it is all dependent on the weather.
What part does global warming take in all of this?
New Year around the world
Chatham Islands, Pacific
2008 will reach the isolated and sparsely populated Chatham Islands first.
London
Since 2005, the midnight fireworks show has been launched from the London Eye, and people congregate on Tower, Westminster, London and Blackfriars bridges. The longstanding charity New Year's Day parade goes from Westminster to Green Park.
Sydney
The city will explode with the largest and most complex pyrotechnics display ever, with the focus being the Harbour Bridge, according to its director. Barges are laden with fireworks and center stage will be The Bridge Effect, a 40-ton display.
Venice
A New Year's Eve dance heads from Campo S Margherita to St. Mark's Square where 35,000 people gather in a huge celebration with jazz music and a giant fireworks display. A 70-metre table bears Prosecco bottles, which are uncorked after the midnight countdown. On New Year's Day many bathers take a chilling dip in the waters of Venice's Lido Beach.
Las Vegas
America's Party — Las Vegas New Year 2008 will feature swing and big band tunes while the pyrotechnics blast from seven hotel rooftops. The eight-minute show will feature several fireworks never seen before.

Sue Quigley is a native of Scotland and is the associate editor of Hernando Today. She lives in Spring Hill and can be reached at squigley@hernandotoday.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT