In Scotland’s Christmas, popular culture researcher Dr Tom Christie and archaeologist Dr Murray Cook take a look at how Christmas and other winter festivals have been celebrated, banned, and reborn throughout Scotland’s long history. In this Q&A, they provide insights into the book’s fascinating content.

Scotland’s Christmas
By Thomas Christie and Murray Cook
Published by Extremis Publishing

Can you tell readers a little about what they can expect from Scotland’s Christmas?

Tom: Writing this book was a real labour of love for both Murray and myself. We’d both tackled the subject a few times in the past, including in a podcast and later a live presentation, and we eventually realised that nobody else had ever written a full-length account of Christmas in Scotland. Murray and I have been friends for a long time, but we have dramatically different research backgrounds; he is an archaeologist, whereas I’ve spent most of my writing career considering different aspects of popular culture. So it seemed like an ideal writing partnership, as we could cover every aspect of Scotland’s Christmas from the distant past to the present day – looking at the most ancient traditions and the most modern customs, including a few surprises along the way.

Murray: The book covers a little bit of everything! The origins of Christmas in Scotland and its predecessors from its prehistoric mid-winter festivals to Roman Saturnalia and Viking Yule, all of which were celebrated in Scotland. We also explore the elegance and beauty of Royal Christmases in medieval Scotland where it was a fun religious festival, celebrating the birth of the most powerful being in the universe as a helpless babe in a manger; an incredible concept. This is contrasted with the banning of Christmas during the Protestant Reformation, and then its modern reinvention. We also look at Scotland’s worst Christmases from Viking massacres to Wallace on the run, and the last ever siege of Stirling and its Castle by Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1745. The second half of the book looks at how Christmas is celebrated today as well as how Scotland’s Christmas is viewed from abroad.

The book looks back over 10,000 years of Scottish Christmases. Which notable traditions have been lost over that time, and do any still remain?

Tom: What most impressed me was the fact that celebrating in the wintertime has such a long history in Scotland – even the ancient Romans weren’t averse to the idea of enjoying themselves when the nights were long and the weather was cold. I’d like to think that this is part of the reason why Christmas has become such an inclusive holiday in the present day; you don’t necessarily need to align with any of its religious foundations to be able to celebrate it, which means that it has become a great way of bringing people together.

But it’s also great to know that Christmas has been celebrated in Scotland for so long; that back in medieval times people were exchanging gifts and making merry, albeit in quite different ways than we would recognise today. Then we see the Victorians laying the foundations for the kind of celebrations that have come to characterise the holiday in the modern day: Robert Louis Stevenson writing a Christmas thriller, black bun and clootie dumpling becoming festive fare, and even a surprising link between Edinburgh and Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

Of course, the celebration of Christmas is always evolving, and while many individual traditions have come and gone over the centuries, I’d like to think that the core message of appreciating our friends, family and community has always remained largely the same.

Murray: One of the very interesting things about Scotland’s Christmas is that it has undergone a constant process of reinvention, and several traditions that started in Christmas ended up elsewhere – like guising, which is now part of Halloween. Other things like cleaning the house on Christmas Eve also become associated with New Year. What seems to have happened was that the medieval Twelve Days of Christmas got split up, with all the fun being moved to either side of Christmas Day itself.

The most surprising change was of course the banning of Christmas, which didn’t become a widely recognised or celebrated holiday until the 1970s. For centuries people worked over the festive season, and this included mining. We even explore the subject of Christmas Day industrial fatalities in our ‘Scotland’s Worst Ever Christmas’ section.

And finally, the food has got much better! For generations, Sowans flavored with honey was a festive treat. For those that don’t know, these are made from the starch of the inner husks of oats after milling. These too end up becoming a feature of other festivities, and Robert Burns links them to Halloween:

Wi’ merry sangs, and friendly cracks,
I wat they didna weary;
And unco tales, and funny jokes,
Their sports were cheap and cheery;
Till butter’d so’ns, wi’ fragrant lunt,
Set a’ their gabs a-steerin’;
Syne, wi’ a social glass o’ strunt,
They parted aff careerin’
Fu’ blythe that night.

Are there lessons you think we can learn and apply to present-day festivities from studying the history of Christmas in Scotland?

Tom: In Scotland, the focus of Christmas – just like Hogmanay – has more often than not been on friendship and community. It’s a time to recognise that life is short, our friends are precious, and that we need to appreciate what we have. That’s a sentiment which is just as relevant today as it was 10,000 years ago.

Murray: For me, the key is to not be dogmatic: to not insist on what is and isn’t meant to be part of Christmas. The key is to celebrate human companionship, especially when it starts to get cold and dark.

What, if anything, has historically distinguished Christmas in Scotland from other parts of the Western world?

Tom: As always, Scotland very much has its own way of doing things! Even when it comes to the modern day, our take on the festive season has exhibited – as Billy Connolly once put it – something of a sideways look at life. It’s the only place I know where a gritty, hard-hitting TV series like Taggart can offer not one but three Christmas specials. Then there has been music, literature and even computer games produced in Scotland which celebrate the festive season even while offering a subtle critique of modern social conventions. If we can treat each other with camaraderie and respect during Christmas, after all, then why can’t we do it all the year round? That’s the question that Ebenezer Scrooge was forced to grapple with, and yet it remains pertinent even in the here and now.

It’s also important not to neglect the folklore which has come to surround Christmas in Scotland – it’s all an intrinsic part of our cultural heritage. There was the legendary werewolf-like figure of the Wulver in Shetland which, in spite of its fearsome appearance, was actually a kindly character who liked to leave fish for impoverished families of the community as a gift. Then there was the rather less benign Chimney Demon, which terrorised children in the Western Isles by whispering ominous warnings down into their fireplaces. Like so many countries, Scotland has its own distinctive range of mythical creatures which form part of its Christmas legendarium.

The closer we get to the present day, the more homogenised the celebrations seem to become; Christmas trees, crackers, greetings cards and the like. Yet even now, Scotland is producing new creative works which celebrate the timeless themes of Christmas while still presenting a distinctively Scottish character. Just look at the way that whisky, the clootie dumpling and other favourites are constantly being reinvented to appeal to modern tastes – and to invite visitors to come and experience a Scottish Christmas for themselves. Whether you prefer mince pies or Ecclefechan tarts, Scotland’s Christmas will have something unexpected to offer for your enjoyment.

Murray: Scotland has come up with a fair number of Christmas firsts. There was the first Christmas Card, and Britain’s first recorded mention of Santa. But inevitably what makes Scotland unique is the extent of the Christmas ban, which was a Europe-wide attempt by religious reformers to remove what they saw as flummery and corruption. However, this also removed a lot of fun and humanity from proceedings. We went further than anyone else, and there were trials and fines for people singing carols or baking yule bread. Famously, even King James VI was not excluded from the Kirk’s wrath. in 1598, ministers in Edinburgh were furious at the scale of celebrations when the Court was in Dalkeith in 1598 and complained that they had ‘being informit of the greit abus that hes bene in the kingis maiesteis hous, in the town of edinburgh and vther partis about the keiping of yule hes ordanit that his maiesteis ministeris speik his maiestie that ordour may be taken with his hous.’ It seems probable that the celebrations may have included firing cannon, which delighted James. However, so severe was the King’s offence that the Kirk ordered two ministers ‘to ga to the kingis maiestie and to crawe yoolkeiping may be stayit’. Now, what would make the King risk the Kirk’s fury, we hear you cry? Why, no less an occasion than the birth of his second daughter in Dalkeith on the 24^th of December.

Indeed, Christmas only really became a widely recognised holiday in Scotland in the 1970s, and there are still Scottish congregations to this day that ban it. Famously, two staunch Communists – the Petroffs – who were visiting Glasgow’s John Maclean (the famous trade unionist) from Russia in 1915 were shocked at the lack of festivities. Irma Petroff went to buy a tree and decorate the front room of the house they were guests in herself, much to the delight of the family’s children, as it was clear that no-one would have normally thought of doing it. Indeed, Christmas was still just hanging on in Bolshevik Russia at that point, though not for long. On Christmas Day in 1919, Vladimir Lenin was keen to abolish religious holidays and make them normal working days, and he ordered: ‘To put up with Nikola (St Nicholas) would be stupid – the entire secret police must be on the alert to see to that those who do not show up for work because of Nikola are shot’. Like Scotland after the Reformation, Christmas was no longer a private matter.

Do you have a particular favourite Christmas tradition?

Tom: For me, Christmas doesn’t really arrive until the double-issue of the Radio Times has hit the shelves and there is a plentiful supply of Quality Street! It’s a great time for catching up with old friends, telling really corny jokes and relishing the rare opportunity to slow down at a time when the pace of life otherwise seems to move at a constant breakneck speed.

Murray: I’m all in favour of developing new traditions. There is constant reinvention of the festive season, and the Cook family have started doing a loony dook on Christmas morning to prepare our tummies for overeating! And, if I’m being brutally honest, don’t forget deep-fried pigs in blankets too!

What is one thing you hope readers take from Scotland’s Christmas?

Tom: To know that Scotland has brought so much to the celebration of the festive season over the centuries – a contribution which forms just one part of a huge tapestry of Christmas traditions from all over the world.

Murray: To realise that Scotland’s Christmas is both unique and typical; that we have taken the best bits from 10,000 years of celebrations to make something perfectly formed for either tower houses or but ‘n’ bens.

Scotland’s Christmas by Thomas Christie and Murray Cook is published by Extremis Publishing, priced £16.99.