There have been several threads lately on the attitudes of the Scottish diaspora compared with those resident in Scotland.
It seems to me that Scottish traditions are alive and well overseas while they are in danger of sinking without trace back home here because people are busy getting on with their daily lives and have no particular interest in their Scottish heritage.
I have attended Highland Games in USA and in England and the common factor has been thriving well attended events.
Although there are games to be found in Scotland every weekend from early May to mid September many of these are small scale events with few participants and few if any vendor stalls. Heavy Athletics in USA appears to have much more entries compared with Scotland where it would be exceptional to have more than ten competitors. Most of our games in Scotland are afternoon events while the two which I have attended in USA (Ventura 2009 and Loon Mountain 2010) both lasted over a full weekend.
At a time of year when I would previously have been busy planning my local games here in Hawick I am instead having to tell all the contacts that there will be no games in 2012 as we have run out of money due to falling attendances in recent years, which in turn has led to fewer traders willing to pay for vendor stalls and fewer programme advertisers.
My Scottish Country Dance class started back last night after the festive break and there were only six of us dancers turned up to dance to a six piece band (three accordions, fiddler, drummer and banjo), fortunately three ladies and three men so at least we could do some dancing. At the mid evening break the husband of one of the ladies arrived and the (female) dance teacher joined in so we now had four couples and were able to do some set dances in the second half of the evening, but the teacher has threatened to discontinue the class at the end of January if numbers of attendees don't increase.
It really would be a shame to lose Highland Games and Scottish Country Dancing in their homeland but thankfully the diaspora are keeping these traditions alive worldwide.