Happy Hogmanay

When I was a kid we used to celebrate Hogmanay on New Year's Eve because our closest neighbors and dearest friends, Tom and Jean Gage, were Scottish. So, throughout my childhood, New Year's Eve meant singing Robert Burns' poem "Auld Lang Syne" and waiting for a tall dark stranger to be the first person to cross the threshold at midnight carrying a lump of coal, a piece of shortbread, some coins, salt and whisky. My dad and the other neighborhood dads would take turns disguising themselves each year to play the part. I had no idea what it was all about but it was magical and mysterious to us kids.

When I was 19, my dad died on New Year's Eve. The following year Tom's wife, Jean, died. Tom and my mother had always been good friends and no one was surprised when they announced the next year that they were going to get married. At that time I felt that, since my mother was now going to be taken care of, I could finally leave South Africa before I was put in jail again.

(In those days, anyone who criticized apartheid was called a communist and Kafirboetie - which is Afrikaans for nigger-lover - and was jailed. Too many anti-apartheid activists "fell out of windows while in custody." I had also started to dislike the real communists in the anti-apartheid movement and did not feel like dying for their Marxist dystopia.)

So, with my mom happily married to Tom, I moved to Scotland to stay with my friend, Keith McGibbon, in Dumfries, the birthplace and stomping ground of the poet Robert Burns. Keith and I used to drive up to Edinburgh every weekend. It was here that I celebrated my first real Scottish Hogmanay pub-crawling with Keith and his drunken sailor friends around the city and watching the fireworks over the Castle at midnight.

Keith, like most Scotsmen, had hollow legs and was able to drink twice as many Scotch whisky with beer chasers as I could. I tried to keep up but I started suffering from hangovers for the first time in my life. One night we were went dancing at some disco and the next morning I woke up to find myself lying on a sofa in a strange house. I had no idea how I got there until a young lady came in to ask me if I wanted to go to Mass with her.

Apparently I had been dancing with her when I had passed out on the dance floor and she had taken me home. So off to Mass I went with the young lady and her parents and siblings. I didn't go back to being a church-going Catholic again but I did stop drinking for the next 15 years. I decided to get away from Keith and his drunken sailor friends and moved to London.

I don't have one drop of Scottish blood in me but seem to draw Scottish people to me. In London I met another young Scottish lady who was a ballet dancer. She was not only beautiful but also had the typical wicked Scots sense of humor, heavy with sarcasm. We married and, when she got pregnant, we decided to move to Scotland to be closer to her mother in Glasgow where our son was born.

Where was I? Oh, yes - Hogmanay. Only now, as I am writing this, did I realize that I don't have a clue what it means so I'm going to Google it and see what I find.

It seems that it was an old winter solstice tradition brought to Scotland by the Vikings. The Scots started using Hogmanay as an excuse for a party after Christmas was banned in Scotland by the Presbyterians for 400 years until 1950 because Christmas was regarded as a "Popish" holiday.

To ensure good luck for the house, the first person to cross the threshold should be dark male. This may be because, in the Viking days when blond strangers arrived on your doorstep, it meant trouble. The lump of coal, piece of shortbread, salt, money and whisky are obvious symbols of prosperity.

"Should auld acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot and auld lang syne
For auld lang syne, my dear, for auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o kindness yet, for auld lang syne."

Some pics of the Hogmanay fireworks over Edinburgh Castle.