Christmas in Scotland

How Scotland celebrates Christmas

A Scottish Christmas today has everything a British one has: lights on the high street, Advent calendars, carol services, nativity plays, stockings for Santa, a roast turkey dinner with crackers and paper hats, and Boxing Day. What is distinctive is the balance between Christmas and New Year. For most of the last four hundred years, the Scottish winter festival was Hogmanay and Ne'erday (New Year's Day), not Christmas, and many Scots worked on 25 December until the mid-20th century. The festive stretch from Christmas to Handsel Monday in January, taking in Hogmanay and Ne'erday, was once known as the Daft Days. For how Scotland fits into the wider British Christmas, see Christmas in the UK.

Why Christmas was banned in Scotland

Before the Reformation, Yule (in Gaelic, Nollaig) was kept in Scotland much as in the rest of Catholic Europe, with feasting and church festivals. The Protestant Reformation of 1560 swept away saints' days and church holidays, and the Presbyterian Kirk regarded Christmas as a Catholic, unscriptural feast. On 5 June 1640 the Scottish Parliament's Yule Vacance Act abolished the Yule holiday and "all observation thereof in time coming". Even baking Yule bread became an offence.

The laws were relaxed and reimposed more than once over the next century, but the habit stuck: for most Scots, 25 December remained an ordinary working day. Celebration, gift-giving and feasting moved to the New Year. Christmas Day only became a public holiday in Scotland in 1958, and Boxing Day in 1974. Since the 1980s Christmas has caught up with, and for many families overtaken, Hogmanay.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day today

On Christmas Eve, some families go to midnight Mass, and a mince pie with a glass of sherry or whisky is left out for Santa. Christmas Day brings presents in the morning, a large lunch with crackers and the King's Christmas message at 3pm. In Orkney, Christmas Day also brings the Kirkwall Ba', a mass street football game played in the centre of Kirkwall between the Uppies and the Doonies, with no time limit and a hand-stitched leather ball packed with cork dust. The Uppies win by touching the ball against a wall at Mackinson's Corner and the Doonies by getting it into the water of the harbour basin. The game is recorded from 1650, and the Christmas Day game became popular from 1870.

Some old Scottish customs are still remembered: burning a rowan twig was said to clear bad feeling between friends or family, and a Yule bread was baked for each member of the family, with luck for whoever found a trinket inside.

Christmas markets in Edinburgh and Glasgow

Edinburgh's Christmas runs from Saturday, 14 November 2026 to Sunday, 3 January 2027. Its traditional market, with about 70 stalls of gifts, local food and drink, fills East Princes Street Gardens beneath the Scott Monument, with a 46-metre Big Wheel and the Starflyer ride; a family funfair takes over West Princes Street Gardens, and there is an undercover ice rink on George Street. Entry to the market is free.

In Glasgow, German-style Christmas markets have traditionally filled George Square and St Enoch Square through the festive season. With George Square closed for redevelopment, the city moved its main 2025 festive market to Glasgow Green and spread winter hubs through the city centre.

Hogmanay: Scotland's New Year

Redding the house

Hogmanay preparations begin with redding: cleaning the house from top to bottom before midnight, emptying the ashes from the fire and, ideally, paying off debts, so that the new year starts clean. Cleaning or doing laundry on New Year's Day itself is said to sweep or wash the luck away.

First-footing

The most famous Hogmanay custom is first-footing. The first person to cross the threshold after midnight sets the luck of the house for the year, and the ideal first-foot is a dark-haired man, a preference often explained as a memory of the Viking age, when a fair-haired stranger at the door meant trouble. He brings symbolic gifts: coal for warmth, salt, shortbread or black bun so the house will not go hungry, and a dram of whisky.

Auld Lang Syne

Just after midnight, Scots join hands to sing Auld Lang Syne. Robert Burns sent his version of the old song to James Johnson's Scots Musical Museum in 1788; the tune sung today first appeared with his words in 1799. The title means roughly "old long since", days gone by. In the Scottish way of singing it, people stand in a circle and only cross their arms and join hands with their neighbours at the start of the last verse.

Edinburgh's Hogmanay

Edinburgh's Hogmanay has been run as a festival since 1993, and its organisers describe it as one of the world's greatest New Year celebrations. In 2026–27 it runs from 29 December to 1 January. It opens with the Torchlight Procession on Tuesday, 29 December 2026 at 6:30pm, led by pipers, drummers and Up Helly Aa guizers from Shetland through the Old Town. On Hogmanay itself, the Street Party on Princes Street, for about 45,000 ticket holders, and the Concert in the Gardens build to the Midnight Moment, when fireworks burst from Edinburgh Castle. New Year's Day brings a free First Footin' programme of music and events across the city, and in the Firth of Forth the brave take the Loony Dook, a New Year's Day plunge into the sea.

Many people mark the turn of the year by sending greetings to family and friends far away, and Hogmanay and New Year 2027 greeting cards are available free to share online, along with New Year status images, quote cards and ready-to-send wishes. The Gaelic greeting is Bliadhna Mhath Ùr, Happy New Year.

Scotland's winter fire festivals

Fire has long been part of the Scottish New Year, as a way to drive off evil spirits and welcome the returning sun.

In Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire, the Fireballs ceremony begins at midnight on Hogmanay, when about 45 local swingers light their fireballs on the Shorehead and swing them round their heads as they process up and down the High Street. After about 25 minutes they hurl the fireballs into the harbour and fireworks go up from the cliffs. The ceremony was first recorded in 1908, is thought to be older, and draws about 10,000 spectators.

In Comrie, Perthshire, the Flambeaux are lit as midnight strikes on Hogmanay: tall poles topped with sacking are set alight in Melville Square and carried round the village behind pipers, with a fancy-dress parade, before being thrown into the River Earn.

In Burghead, Moray, Burning the Clavie takes place on 11 January, the old New Year's Eve before the calendar change. Led by the Clavie King, a burning barrel of peat and wood on a pole is carried through the village from 6pm, handing out smouldering embers for luck, and ends as a bonfire on Doorie Hill.

Christmas and Hogmanay around Scotland

Traditional Scottish Christmas and New Year food

Black bun shows how Scottish history shaped its food: it began as a Twelfth Night cake, with a bean hidden inside to choose a "king" for the evening, and moved to Hogmanay when the Reformation ended the Christmas festivities. Shortbread, once too expensive for everyday eating, was saved for weddings, Christmas and New Year.

Scottish Christmas and Hogmanay dates 2026–27

Bank holidays are as published by GOV.UK for Scotland. Unlike England and Wales, Scotland keeps 2 January as a holiday; in 2027 it falls on a Saturday, so the substitute bank holiday is Monday 4 January.

Christmas in Scotland: frequently asked questions

Christmas in nearby countries