Summary

Hogmanay Word on the Week 3rd January 2026.
This is the name given in Scotland to the turn of the year. It marks midnight on December 31st as a significant moment. Traditionally those gathered together join hands and sing Robert Burns poem ‘Auld Lang Syne’.
The song has achieved global recognition! It has become the expression of friendship which is restated annually! The poem has five verses but only the first and the last are usually sung. To add a bit of spice to it the last verse is sung with arms crossed and hands shaken (a right gude-willie waught) to emphasise the bond of friendship.
The main ritual of Hogmanay is the act of ‘first-footing’. This requires a tall, dark and handsome person to be the first to cross the threshold of the house thus guaranteeing good fortune for the year!
The person should bear a small gift, typically a lump of coal, and exclaim “Lang may yer lum reek wi either foulk’s coal”. The idea being the more coal bearing friends you have the longer your fire would stay lit! We had one neighbour who resolutely stuck to the practice but alas coal fires are now a thing of the past.
The children had their place in the proceedings before they were packed off to bed. Perhaps they would be allowed downstairs briefly as the New Year bells were rung but their opportunity came earlier in the day. While the adults were busy cleaning the house the youngsters would go round the houses looking for a Hogmanay gift! The song they sang, in my father’s time, went like this: -
Rise up guidwife an shak your feathers!
An dinna think that we are beggars;
For we’re guid bairns come oot to play,
Rise up an gie’s oor Hogmanay!
Oor feet’s caul, oor sheen’s thin;
Gie’s a piece, an lat us rin!
I think you will get the gist of it without a translation!
The making of New Year’s resolutions occupied our time. This practice was maintained despite an almost total failure to keep them! Later when we became Christian we would select a text of Scripture to live by that year.
The verse often had a reference to the passage of time. Paul’s astonishing statement in Romans Chapter 5 verses 6 to 9: - is a good example.
‘You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, although for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners: Christ died for us.’