How our packaged Hogmanay has lost its old Scottish soul

Published on Sunday 3 January 2010 21:39

WELL, at least Scotland has already had one resounding success in 2010. Hogmanay celebrations, which nowadays means sales to the ticketed spectacular in Edinburgh, went well, which means a lot of tourists paid and only four unruly locals were arrested. There was a stunning fireworks display – which punctuated the all-important moment with a visual cue allowing every Edinburgher to feel included.

Fireworks, however, happen during the festival every night and a quick stay in any northern European city – even penniless Reyjavik – reveals most do fireworks bigger, better and more spontaneously than we do.

And fireworks were invented in China. The kilt, or belted plaid at least, was invented here. Bagpipes were not but are most visibly and audibly associated with Scotland. And Hogmanay – a communal participation in an ancient mid-winter rite of passage – derives from Scotland's Nordic past.

Yet this Hogmanay, the highlights featured imported culture with almost no distinctively Scottish content. As usual.

Pleasant and diverting as it all was, the World's New Year had a distinctly hollow feel. Perhaps a 20-year tradition of Highland or Nordic Hogmanays have made me rather atypical. I want to see daft acts of daring, and to do something unpredictable. I expect to have surprisingly close, intimate chats with strangers sitting awkwardly on badly cushioned arms of old sofas. Above all, I need a night off from the grinding, monotonous conformity of business – and behaviour – as usual. I don't need to get drunk. I do need to sing. I want to entertain and be entertained.

Am I alone? And are any of these primal Hogmanay urges satisfied at Edinburgh's big event?

Perhaps creating a "genuine" experience for 80,000 people is impossible. Perhaps – being Scottish and forty-something – I am not the "target demographic" anyway.

Perhaps, in an MTV age, narrow, parochial old-style Scottishness doesn't sell. Or does sell – to the wrong people. Older Scots who are not inclined to come out or shell out for a freezing, late-night burst of their own culture.

Perhaps Edinburgh's clever re-invention as self-styled New Year Capital of the World in time for the widely televised Millennium celebrations, deserves praise. Despite years with bad weather, bad behaviour and bad crowd control, the organisers have largely succeeded in cementing together Edinburgh and Hogmanay in many minds. Forty years of Edinburgh Festival means locals are used to becoming strangers in their own town anyway – and in a recession, who's complaining about extra bums in beds?

There's no denying the current Edinburgh "package" sells. But does it heal? Inspire? Transform?

Great crowds thronged Princes Street. But crowds happen in sales – and at least the pavement is free. Great British bands thronged stages. Doubtless. In 2009 Mad-ness became the first band to have London's Regent Street closed for a concert. Singer Suggs said: "Playing Regent Street is all about outdoing the Beatles." What was playing Princes Street about?

There's no doubting the band's pulling power. Financially speaking, Princes Street's "This Could Happen Anywhere" Hogmanay washed its face, in stark contrast to Holyrood Park's "Uniquely Scottish" Homecoming.

Content and style-wise, though, Hogmanay and Homecoming had two things in common – a hefty admission price, and a near absence of daring, spontaneity, verve, energy … or Scots.

Walking the city-centre streets on January 1, we found tourists looking for authentically Scottish moments but finding authentically American Starbucks and authentically European street performers instead.

French fire artists in the Royal Mile were … eye-catching. The Giant Man, a colourful, kilted puppet suspended from a crane, was … large.

It was spectacular and yet quite unmoving at the same time.

There is no better example of where the last decade has gone wrong.

How we have changed and how Hogmanay has changed with us. From active to passive. From spontaneous to organised. From neighbourly to anonymous. From free to ticketed. From being entertaining to being entertained.

Does it matter that we cannot or will not entertain ourselves?

It appears there is no way back – in Scotland's cities at least. The inability to entertain one another isn't confined to Princes Street. The genuine neighbourliness that allowed confident, first-footing is gone forever. But as David Hayes of openDemocracy points out: "The Edinburgh Hogmanay, with its sundering of generational bonds and confiscation of public space, is no answer either. When tradition is commodified, it becomes heritage. Do they (the people who 'carried' the tradition) embrace the new, lament the old, or stay at home and watch television?"

Last time the decade turned we worried in vain about technical Armageddon. This turning decade presents us with a more potent problem. Social meltdown. A collapse in our ability to experience ourselves and connect authentically with one another … and then the world.

If Scots truly cannot entertain themselves any more, the organised Hogmanay must change. Why not open our public world at Hogmanay instead of closing it? Schools, leisure centres, swimming pools, galleries and museums could open with special events all night. Young musicians could be encouraged to play over the bells in local pubs and the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama could teach them how to encourage performance from the surrounding audience. The night's symbolic centrepiece could see crowds follow a thousand pipers up the Royal Mile to arrive on the Castle Esplanade on the stroke of midnight. Why not?

As Liz Lochhead says of Hogmanay, in View of Scotland/Love Poem: "If we're to even hope to prosper/this midnight must find us/how we would like to be."

Does Edinburgh's present Hogmanay really hit the mark?