HOGMANAY again. Soon to be showing at an Accident and Emergency unit near you. Oh happy day! Hogmanay is a word that sends shivers up and down my spine. While New Year's Eve may spark innocent celebrations across the world, Scotland's Hogmanay is a word with darker overtones. It is full of menacing exuberance.
How is it for you? Does Hogmanay conjure up feelings of unalloyed bliss? I hate Hogmanay. (And yet, I love it a bit as well. ) Teasing out the reasons for these heart-felt ambivalences is a complicated process. You don't have to be Proust to see it involves remembrance of uneasy times past.
As a youth, I disliked the tension of Hogmanay. I was under a three-line whip to be back home before midnight. The house had been cleaned from top to bottom. The drinks were on the table, beside the black bun, ready for the edgy countdown. Semi-Presbyterian Scotland was preparing to get pissed again, like it did last winter.
The midnight bells signalled a manic outburst of cheering - and, of course, kissing. In many households, family members who hardly touched each other the whole year pecked one another awkwardly. It was like that uncomfortable time at Communion orMass when fundamentally non-tactile people are invited to exchange the Peace, and the result is corporate embarrassment.
If you had ears to hear, there was a quieter sound in the background. It was the sound of weeping, as people who had pre-empted the bells by looking into a glass, darkly, remembered their losses during the year that was awa'.
The evening could only get worse. Some auntie or other would break her false teeth on the black bun. The celebrations deteriorated as people started to sing, may God forgive them. Normally reticent souls, fuelled by drink, were led to believe they had been magically transformed into Callas, or Pavarotti, or, even more improbably, Presley. It was excruciating to the point of enjoyment.
Then out you went first footing. This was hazardous. People who normally wouldn't deign to be polite throughout the year would cross the road to greet you, and would started slobbering over you as if you were a long-lost sibling home from the jungles of Borneo. If you were lucky, all that would happen was that somebody would be sick on your trendy gear. If you were seriously unlucky you would experience grievous bodily harm at the hands of a normally shy bank managerwho imagined in the wee surreal sma' oors that he was Thorfinn the Skullsplitter.
Nowadays, Hogmanay's a bit different. We live in the television age and tend to see the New Year in by watching toecurlingly awful drivel on the box. Hogmanay, like everything else, has been co-opted by the brain-rotting celebrity culture. One thing is constant, though: Scotland still tends to celebrate milestones by getting smashed. We are experts at it. We could run a masterclass in the subject.
So that's why I hate Hogmanay. There are only so many maudlin, melancholy songs - listening to Flower of Scotland wailed through drink, like a wounded wolf, at three in the morning, is a truly dreadful Scottish experience - a sane human being can take.
And yet . . . there's something real about it, too. Sure, the New Year emotions are grotesque and raw and exaggerated, but at least they're there, even if they're a bit too much "in your face". The hills are alive with the sound of music (even if the hills still belong to the lairds, and the music is truly ghastly). And there is something touching, is there not, about a repressed maiden aunt, high on sherry, giving Je Ne Regret Rien laldy.
I used to love the local brass band, which proudly paraded every New Year through the streets of Cowdenbeath. I especially loved the slightly melancholy hymn tunes, with their delicious intimations of mortality and immortality. Only a mordant Scottish Presbyterian could find that enjoyable; but that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, what I am. That's why I love New Year, even when I hate it.
One emotion stands out in all of these experiences - a profound sense of yearning. New Year highlights loves and losses, celebrations and bereavements, affirmations and woundings. Mediated through drink, it becomes highly sentimental and even theatrical. But behind it all there's an unmistakable longing for better and more generous things. I love Seamus Heaney's poem:
History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme,
So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that a farther shore
Is reachable from here.
Ah, Hogmanay, I hate you and I love you. I hate your falseness and your gross sentimentality. But, even in my forebodings, I love the way you keep posing human questions, the way you keep alive an insatiable yearning for something better.
Have a good New Year.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article