Greeting to all!

Are we ready for Christmas yet? I really do not know how the Holiday Season catches me unaware and unprepared every year. Once again I am scrambling to try and catch up with the calendar. Our annual Pot Luck is the 9th of December and I hope you will be able to come out and join us.

We have been blessed to have Tim Wallace step up and be willing to serve as Vice President for the remainder of Tyler’s term. Now if we could get someone to agree to serve as Recording Secretary and also someone to be Treasurer, it would be a great start to the New Year. I do hope that each of you will have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year in 2011.

Remember, the Games are coming up soon and we will need everyone to come out and support that effort through volunteering to help us in your favorite area.

Robert Burns Dinner is set for January 29, 2011. You can get your tickets from the web site just like last year and we are happy to say that we managed to keep the price the same as last year, at $45.00 per person. It will be a great evening, with traditional menu, music and dancers, Scotch tasting, Silent Auction, all followed with a band and dance floor for your pleasure.

Don’t miss out on this great event at the Holiday Inn Suites on Country Club Road, just south of US 60 in Mesa. Check the web site for details.

Most sincerely,
Jean Latimer, President
 

Back to top 

Back to top 

---

2011 Games Volunteers Needed

---

ARIZONA HIGHLAND GAMES & GATHERING
February 26 -27, 2011
Steele Indian School Park, Phoenix, AZ

Bagpipes—Dancers—Genealogy—Food—Fun

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED
Sign up online

Back to top 

Back to top 

Not doing something for about four hundred years would generally be enough to make you forget how exactly it was you did it in the first place right? Well yes, and unfortunately, such is the case for the Scottish Christmas celebrations.

Somewhere in the middle of the sixteenth century, Christmas was banned in Scotland. The country was mainly protestant at the time. Christmas was seen in Scotland as a Roman Catholic holiday — and celebrating it was obviously unacceptable. The banning of Christmas was a very serious affair. There were plenty of legal repercussions for people who celebrated the birth of Christ in any way.

The people of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, were oppressed by Oliver Cromwell in the mid-1600s. During a period known as the Reformation, Parliament issued the ban in 1647, and upheld it for nearly 15 years. When Cromwell fell from grace, the ban was lifted in most of the U.K., but not in Scotland. The Scottish Presbyterian Church continued to discourage Christmas holiday festivities including formal Mass, and people suffered penalties if caught celebrating. This ban lasted for nearly 400 years. Only in the 1950s was the ban lifted and Christmas and the U.K. tradition of Boxing Day became a national holiday in 1958, though many Scots still thought it highly unacceptable to make a big production out of the occasion.

Having been deprived of Christmas celebrations until a time when the mass media were already firmly in place has meant Scottish holiday customs have become heavily influenced by foreign traditions (mainly U.S. and England). That’s why the Scots now eat a turkey dinner on Christmas Day with all the trimmings. Unlike in the past when Santa Claus would visit the first day of the New Year (Hogmanay) Santa has moved with the times and visits Scotland late Christmas Eve and the early hours of Christmas Day.

One of the Scottish Christmas traditions that was banned for so many years included the baking of Yule bread which is similar to oatcakes sometimes called bannocks. During the ban bakers were required to give the authorities the name of anyone requesting this holiday staple. A loaf of unleavened bread is baked for each individual in the family, and the person who finds a trinket in his or her loaf will have good luck all year.

There used to be an old long-standing Scottish superstition that one absolutely had to keep the fire going in the fireplace on Christmas Eve. If not, the sprites that were roaming around outside would climb down the chimney—and apparently, you didn’t want that to happen. Another (once clandestine) custom is the burning of the Yule log; a log of birch wood is cut by the end of the summer and left to dry. It is then ceremoniously brought inside the house on Christmas Eve, paraded around the kitchen three times, toasted to and finally burned in the fireplace.

The day after Christmas is called Boxing Day and has been adopted from England. December 26 is also known as St. Stephen’s Day (when Good King Wenceslas looked out). “Good King Wenceslas looked out, On the Feast of Stephen…..” The origins of Boxing Day go back to when the rich, or the Lord and Lady of the castle gathered together all their staff and organized the distribution of gifts, done according to the status of the worker and size of the family. Cloth, leather goods, new tools and supplies of salt and spices as well as food were given. They were presented in BOXES, thus the day became known as “Boxing Day”.
 

Jane Anthony
11715 131st Street
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5M 1C7
email: janthony68@gmail.com

Back to top 

Oatcakes / Bannocks

Oatcakes are a very traditional part of the Scottish diet. They were cooked on a griddle (a flat iron pot placed over the fire) but nowadays a heavy frying pan is used.

Ingredients:

4 oz. medium oatmeal Pinch of salt
2 tps melted fat (bacon fat) 3/4 tbs hot water
2 pinches soda Additional oatmeal for kneading

Method:

Mix the oatmeal, salt and soda and pour the melted fat into the center of the mixture. Stir well, and add enough water to make into a stiff paste. Cover a surface in oatmeal and turn the mixture onto this. Work quickly as the paste is difficult to work if it cools. Divide into two and roll one half into a ball and knead with hands covered in oatmeal to stop it sticking. Roll out to around quarter inch thick. Put a plate which is slightly smaller than the size of your cooking pan over the flattened mixture and cut around to leave a circular oatcake. Cut into quarters (called farls) and place in a heated pan which has been lightly greased. Cook for about 3 minutes until the edges curl slightly, turn, and cook the other side. Roll out the other half of the mixture while the first is being cooked.

Selkirk Bannock

Unlike the traditional bannock, this is more of a fruit cake. It was first made by a baker in Selkirk and originally only made for festive occasions.

Ingredients

1 lb flour 2 oz. chopped mixed peel
8 oz seedless white raisins Quarter pint milk-warmed
4 oz sugar Quarter ounce dried yeast
2 oz. butter and 2 oz. lard Sugar & milk for glaze

Method

Mix flour, sugar and yeast in large bowl. Melt butter and lard together and pour warmed milk into the melted fats. Make a hole in the middle of the flour mixture, add fats, mix well into a smooth dough. Cover the bowl and leave in a warm place for 45 minutes. The dough should double in size. Knead dough for 5 minutes, add raisins and peel and knead for another 5 minutes. Place dough in a loaf pan , cover with plastic wrap and leave in a warm place for 20 minutes to allow it to rise again. Bake in a preheated oven at 350F for about an hour. Glaze: Mix a tablespoon of milk with sugar to make a runny mixture. Remove the cake from the oven and brush the top with the milk/sugar mixture. Return the cake to the oven and bake for another 20 minutes. Test with a skewer until it comes out dry.

Back to top 

Back to top 

Back to top 

Back to top 

Back to top 

---

The Caledonian Society of Arizona
General Meeting Minutes

---

Back to top 

In 1832, Alabama became the first state to declare Christmas a legal holiday.

Back to top