Thought you all might enjoy this snippet from a New Year's Day editorial that orginally appeared in the Los Angeles Times on January 1, 1919.

when you come right down to what New Year's Day is you will find that it is really a day invented for Scotchmen. This and the birthday of Robert Burns are Scots days, pure and simple, and nothing else. Wherever on the face of the earth there are as many as two Scots gathered together they will celebrate this day down to the last dry whistle there is in it. They will toast Prince Charlie and Robert Bruce and St. Andrew in glasses that have the smell of burnt heather and peat smoke in them. They will put on their kilts and play the bagpipes and look and act just as they did when they chased the Hun over the map of Europe and marched with Kitchener into Khartoum. It is good to be a Scot any day of the year, but it is glorious to be one on New Year's Day….
Best regards and wishing you all a happy 2008,

Jake