XMAS SPIRIT OF THE SCOT

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 December 1950, Page 10

XMAS SPIRIT OF THE SCOT

by Douglas M. R. Cobban

It's a bad thing, we are told, to mix one’s drinks. A salutary piece of advice, no doubt, around Christmas and other festive periods. But what’s a poor Scotsman to do when it's next to impossible for him in these hard times to get the only drink that really appeals to him for celebration hours.

“Scotch” is scarce and dear in the land of its production. One of Scotland’s Christmas pantomine favourites, the late Will Fyffe, used to bring the house down after World War I with a song that complained about the price of food (as he called it)— “Twelve-and-tanner a bottle I ” 12/6d a bottle ! The doucest Scot today would be prepared to sell his seul for a bottle at that price. At thrice 12/6d almost, it’s still a rationed commodity five years after World War II; and black market prices are fantastic. It can be no consolation at all, around Christmas anyway, that whisky (not whiskey, please— that’s not Scotch in spelling or taste 1 ) exercises such attraction across the Atlantic that it’s one of Britain’s biggest dollar earners. Taken literally or metaphorically, this question of mixing drinks affects the Scot in varied ways. His hereditary instincts are all against mixing things; be it a matter of drinks, of religion, or of politics. He maybe willing enough on occasion, in the warmth of his favourite “local” (public drinking house) to discuss with a crony both bolitics and religion. But dare suggest that these two mix and pretty sharply he’ll draw attention to the fact that if the Church of England timidly suffers association with the State, his own Established Church of Scotland brooks no such entanglement of affairs spiritual and secular. 16th CENTURY The spirit of the 16th Century Reformer John Knox, the spirit of Jenny Geddes, who threw a stool at the head of a preacher in St. Giles daring to use a prayer book offensive to her Protestant faith, has lived on in the Scot. It affects to this day his very attitude to Christmas rejoicing. For the celebration of Christmas in Scotland, though changing slightly in recent years, is a quite different affair from that in England. Christmas for the benighted Sassenach (Englishman) is a “holiday;" for the Scot it’s a “holy day.” Throughout England, the Christmas holiday mood is so exuberant that it cannot be confined to one day; there they had to institute a Boxing Day (day after Christmas) in order to have two days’ holiday. Boxing Day, forsooth—and the Sassenach has the nerve to point the finger of scorn at our “Caledonia, stern and wild ! ” The Scots celebration of Christmas, in fact, is much more akin to that of France and other European countries. The emphasis there on recognition of Christmas Dav as Nativity Day is increasingly reflected in Scotland nowadays by the attendances, both on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day itself, at church services. Not that we suggest the Englishman does not attend Christmas religious services. He does so, be it agreed, in greater numbers than his fellow Briton north of the Tweed. But the average Scot, with the ghost of Knox hovering around him, reminds himself that Christmas Day was formerly Old Yule Day—a pagan festival.” if ever there was I And he has already enough jibes to contend with from the Sassenach about the “pagan" North. When Mr. Knox’s shadow isn’t too closely around, it may be admitted by the Scot that he. too. observes his pagan festivals. And what festivals ! Gorgeous festivals of fire, veritable sunworship. At the close of the hallow dayse of Yule (feast of the Winter Solstice, in case you don’t know), in January, you should see at Burghead, a Moray Firth town, the ceremony of the “Burning of the Clavie” —an occasion, and night, of real pagan revelry. Or, still more lively spectacle, the ceremony on January 6, (December 25, by the old style calendar), of Up-Helly-Aa. in Shetland, when a gaily bedecked vessel in the Norse tradition is put to sea and . set merrily abloze, as the seal on not just one day’s festival, but a whole month of Yule festivity. In the far north of Scotland, descendants of the Norse invaders of many centuries ago cling to Yule traditions in a way which no other part of Britain emulates nowadays. SOMETHING DIFFERENT But the point is that in whatever way the Scot recogn’ses he has a pagan past, he intends to make it obvious that Christmas, for him, is something different. He refuses to let any of the pagan instincts left in him clash with his Christian conscience—at any rate in such public celebrations as that of Christmas day. If the Englishman can’t see the dif-ference-well, it just goes to show there exists that clear distinction between the two peoples. Yes? Wicked nationalist pride? No, no, no. * To prove it, I'll confess, as a Scot, that the Scots are just mad, much madder than the dogs “who go out in the mid-day sun.” The Scots, when you mention Christmas time to them, have that faraway look that means they are not really thinking of Christmas at all; they’re dreaming of Hogmanay, of black bun and ginger wine and yes, even today, of whisky— not Irish, Canadian, or Australian impurities but the “real Mackay.” Hogmanay? It’s a madness, a lovely madness, that isn't confined to any “pagan” remnant of the country, but sweeps the whole of Scotland off its Presbyterian legs, draws back home every year thousands upon thousands of the 20 million Scots exiles, spread, according to the Sassenach, in nauseating übiquity over the earth's surface. Come to King's Cross Station, London, on the eve of Hogmanay, the last day of the year. You’ll find it crowded all day long with eager, frantic Scots, living for the moment when their train will speed them to Scotland and the night of greatest merriment of the year for Scots at home or abroad.