Even though they efface the landscape, the snows of midwinter make the deeper symbolism more apparent. The psychic differences between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, which long predate Alex Salmond, are most explicit in this season.
When I was a child, Christmas Day was not a bank holiday in Scotland. It was celebrated, but only as a trial match for the major event: Hogmanay. No one has satisfactorily explained its etymology, but the word is so appropriate. It has a moral onomatopeia. Christmas: despite the best efforts of commerce, it has not lost contact with its origins as the greatest festival of all. Wassailing, merry gentlemen — merry everyone — punch, porter and port, great heartening fires, while the weather is a mere decoration: ‘comfort and joy’ may come from one of the shallower carols, but it expresses the English Christmas ethos.
Hogmanay is pre-Christian, and has no savour of the New Testament; the Scots have always preferred the Old.
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