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Abbey Cooks Entertain, Auld Man's Milk, Black bun, Downton Abbey Cookbooks, Downton Abbey Cookies, Downton Abbey Season 3 Christmas Episode, Edwardian recipes, Eggnog, Hogmanay, Scotland, Scottish New Year, Shortbread
Count down to Hogmanay
It is the last day of 2012, and while Christmas in North America is a month long buildup of festivities, reflecting a melting pot of religious, cultural and secular traditions, New Years is more of an after thought, one last party before getting back to business. In Scotland however, Christmas is a low key celebration with a build up to New Years, called Hogmanay, the biggest party of the year. Since the Crawleys visit their scottish relatives in the S3 Christmas episode I though it fitting to pay tribute to the great feast.
In the late 1500s, the Scottish Reformation abolished Christmas, which lasted for 400 hundred years. Most Scots had to work on Christmas Day until the 1960s. In the early 1600s, they changed the date of New Year’s from March 25 to January 1, and began celebrating Hogmanay. Christmas is still celebrated with family as a low key affair, but then the Scots pull out all the stops for a two day holiday.
