Christmas itself was until recent times a purely religous festival and New Year was and still is the main holiday for Scots. Christmas was not traditionally celebrated in Scotland. Hogmanay was the real traditional celebration. The reason it was not celebrated until recently go back a few centuries and, I think, is related to the change from Catholicism to Presbeterianism in Scotland and is linked also to the calander change from Roman Julian to Gregorian (or is it the other way round?). Whatever, the presbeterian church banned Christmas celebrations as it was seen to be papist in origin. As a result, until recently, Christmas was fairly low key. It wasn't even a public holiday until the 1970s when local government re-organisation made it one. Up till then, people worked normally on Christmas day, although the children did get presents. Therefore the Christmas 'traditions' in Scotland are pretty much the same modern US version. If you wanted to have a real traditional Scottish Christmas, you should go into work on Christmas day! In 1997/98 there were strikes at Scottish banks because the bank staff were getting English holidays rather than the Scottish ones which have more time off at New Year.
As a result, most if not all Christmas celebrations nowadays have been
brought in from other cultures (notable England and the US) and thus
I'd be interested in finding out about Christmas customs unique to
Scotland prior to the 20th century.
Presumably both Christmas and New Year are both linked to the ancient midwinter festival; with Christmas being created as a means to make the early Christian church more acceptable to the pagans who already had a festival about that time. The same was done for Easter. Thus there a similarities between the Halowe'en traditions and the New Year. In many parts of the Highlands there are traditional New Year celebrations which follow the Julian calendar and fall on Jan 12th. On this night, girls would celebrate "Hallowe'en" whilst boys would celebrate New Year.
There are some Christmas Scottish tunes at
http://www.maggiesmusic.com/mm215.html
Christmas (as a non-religious celebration) is a fairly recent
importation into Scotland.
When I was a little lad, Santa Claus didn't visit us on Christmas Day.
He would be coming after Hogmanay Night on the first day of the
New Year, although we had a Christmas tree and although we had
Christmas parties in the church hall.
The celebration of Christmas was complicated by varying church
attitudes. The day itself was chosen by the early church to replace
the pagan midwinter solstice celebrations - which is why some Christmas
customs have a pagan connection. Although my own island of South Uist
was remarkable for the high level of peaceful co-existence between
different faiths, the Presbyterian churches tended to regard Christmas
as a Catholic feast and ignored it almost completely -which is why
Scotland's celebrations were transferred to New Year's Eve. Even in
South Uist some Protestants would go out to work on Christmas day -
unless of course it fell on the Sabbath. In Carmichael's "Carmina
Gadelica" you will find that some of the rituals now associated with
New Year were originally part of the Christmas celebration. Even in
Catholic households in the old days it was very much a religious feast
centred round Midnight Mass - with none of the commercialism and ritual
gift-giving of to-day for the simple reason that people were too poor.
Those of you familiar with South Uist will understand why there were
no Christmas trees. :-)
See also [12.16]