Scottish Highland Christmas Traditions and Holiday food.

[neloon]

As I continue to learn more about my Scottish roots in the Highlands, I was wondering how the Scottish celebrate Christmas Eve, Day and the New Year. I would also like to know if they took the holiday traditions to the New World, like Nova Scotia when the left Scotland. I am sure drink was a big part of this, but I am more interested in what a Scottish Highland Christmas was like, both today and in the 18th through the 19th Century. Did they have the tradition of the Christmas tree? Did they have a Father Christmas like the British? What did the eat for a feast? What was Scottish Tradition. I know that my Father told me they put wool stocking up on their bedpost, and got peppermint and fruit hard candy, oranges, apples and few other sweets. Interesting was they put it on their bedposts.

Would love to know????

You need to remember that Presbyterian Scotland regarded Christ Mass as a Roman Catholic festival of no relevance. (The Puritans in England even abolished Christmas during their "reign".) So, in my young day in the 40s/50s, most people worked on Christmas day as usual. The modern version of Father Christmas came in the late 19th century and the idea of Christmas trees had come from Germany with Prince Albert. New Year has always been a bigger thing in Scotland and, in the Highlands, can be celebrated again on January 12th in recognition of the change to the Gregorian calendar!
I'm interested in the stocking hanging - where else but on the end of the bed??
Alan