The Adoption of Christmas: The Amir's Views on Pipers: The Real Scottish Character: An Englishman's View From Our Own Correspondent, Edinburgh, Dee. 28.
There is a growing tendency to. wards the greater observation of Christmas in Scotland. No longer is it de rigueur to wait for the New Year before formally acknowledging the presence of the festive season. Christmas in the North has now almost as great a burden of revelry and wassail as has Hogmanay. Does it mean that we are forgetting our traditions, and that our ancestors, with their fine contempt for Southron customs, have every reason for turning in their graves? Has insidious Sassenach propaganda vitiated the modern Scot's attitude towards that greatest: of Northern occasions, Hogmanay, that he admits the earlier festival to rivalry with it? No true Scot could entertain such thoughts for a moment. The reason is to seek elsewhere. Scots boys and girls have heard so much and read so much about the joys and glories of the English Christmas that they demand that Santa Claus shall also be honoured north of the Tweed. Christmas is essentially the child ren's festival, and the modern child has a habit (no doubt a result of the new education) of knowing its rights and insisting on them. f This undoubtedly has something to do with the altered attitude to Yuletide in Scotland, but there is another and more plausible reason. In a nutshell, it is that two holidays are better than one. By all means, preserve the good old customs, says the modern Scot, but don't let us refuse to accept a good new one. Christmas and Hog-maney, we'll have them both! It isa symptom of gradual evolution to that Brighter Scotland everyone is yearning for.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.