Why did Edinburgh become the home of Hogmanay? | UK News

Tens of thousands of people from around the world will descend on Edinburgh this week to join a huge street party celebrating the new year.

The Scottish capital has long been considered the home of Hogmanay – but how did it get that reputation and what is the history of the event?

For centuries Scotland did not officially celebrate Christmas and many Scots worked on 25 December.

“Yule vacations” were outlawed in 1640 due to Reformation influences and it was only recognised as a public holiday in 1958.

It meant Hogmanay on 31 December with its feasting, music, dancing and traditions such as first-footing was the country’s main winter celebration.

As the capital, Edinburgh was a central hub for this growing celebration, particularly in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Its importance as the main city for the nation allowed the traditions to flourish there more than anywhere else.

The popularity of the New Year’s Eve festivities grew to a point in the 1800s where Edinburgh’s streets were packed after midnight, a testament to the already established zest for the occasion.

Anna Marshall, author of The Little Book of Christmas and Hogmanay, links it to a reaction against the temperance movement in the early 1800s. This saw the industrial middle-classes shun alcohol, in the belief that heavy drinking was affecting the productivity of industry.

“There has been a long history of Hogmanay celebrations at The Tron in Edinburgh for as long as anyone can remember,” she says.

“The temperance movement gained traction in Scotland in the 1830s, which meant alcohol was essentially voluntarily banned in areas particularly in industrial areas, so Glasgow, Lanarkshire, your coal mining areas as well.

“Although there were temperance movements in Edinburgh too its seems that the strongholds were outwith Edinburgh.

“If people were able to drink more freely in Edinburgh and it was away from areas where people thought they would be seen maybe that contributed to Edinburgh becoming the home of Hogmanay.”

The hangover of the temperance movement lasted well into the 20th Century in parts of Scotland.

Kilmacolm, Inverclyde – which had been “dry” since the early 1900s – only got its first pub in the 1990s.

“The lasting influences of the temperance movement went on for quite a long time,” Ms Marshall says.

“Edinburgh was more the intellectual city in Scotland and the temperance movement went alongside the more industrial areas.”

She says there were other traditions going on around Scotland, such as first-footing, which refers to the first person to cross the threshold of a home after midnight on New Year’s Day.

“But it was more of a house-to-house thing than filling a whole street with a party,” she adds.

“Part of Scotland’s first-footing traditions was wassailing, when you share a bowl of warm spiced alcohol and take it from door to door.

“This all stopped in 1812 when a group of hooligans went around brutally mugging all these drunk people and they ended up killing a policeman and a clerk and three of them got executed for it.

“So in 1812 it was clear there was quite a lot of street activity going on at Hogmanay in Edinburgh.

“Edinburgh was a place where a lot of people transited through so there would have certainly been a lot of accommodation for people at Hogmanay.”

Historian Eric Melvin says there was a riot outside the Tron during the new year celebrations in 1811.

“So obviously it’s been a long-standing tradition to celebrate Hogmanay at The Tron in the streets of Edinburgh,” he adds.

“And the reasons given was because the Tron clock could be seen throughout the city.

“The Tron was built in about the 1630s so it’s not recent that we started celebrating outside The Tron.”

Judith Mair, a visiting professor at Edinburgh Napier University says the festival of Hogmanay in Scotland goes back to pagan times.

“Some of the rites and rituals associated with Hogmanay are centuries old, and the tradition of celebrating New Year Eve (as Hogmanay) on a grander scale than Christmas has been a part of Scottish life for many hundreds of years,” she says.

While the traditions were ancient, Edinburgh became the home of Hogmanay internationally in 1993 following a deliberate effort by the local council.

The festival quickly became world-famous, attracting massive crowds and becoming known as one of the largest New Year’s Eve celebrations globally, a status solidified by its Guinness World Record recognition in 1996 for the largest new year’s party.

The modern festival includes a large torchlight procession and a huge street party in Princes Street attended by tens of thousands of people.

Edinburgh’s Hogmanay now brings tens of millions of pounds to Scotland’s economy, with figures from 2018 showing a £39.8m value, boosted by visitors staying longer and spending on hospitality, retail, and attractions.