How Scots celebrated new year during the dark days of the war

A century ago of course there was a lot to move forward from. Britain, as the calendar turned to 1918, had been at war with Germany for over three years, and although thousands of troops were still in the trenches of France and Belgium, there was hope of peace talks eventually bringing an end to the conflict. Back home though there was weariness with rationing and food shortages, almost every family being touched by death in the armed forces, and a Government nervous that the revolution in Russia would inspire the working classes who spent hours queueing for food, loudly grumbling that the rich were not suffering the same privations as they were.

The New Year celebrations were muted – pubs were closing early, alcohol was not always available, and even whisky was hard to come by. But trying to be optimistic, The Herald declared: "Human nature in the last analysis is incorrigible under adversity. One detected the cheerful note in the provision shop queue on Saturday. Along the patient and spasmodically moving ranks ran general banter, a note even of gaiety. The times are of course solemn. But the cheerful spirit is not incompatible with seriousness of purpose.

"The impression gained was that while the times were abnormal it was still the festive season, and the people had determined to make the best of it."

Trying to find the best in everything, The Herald surmised that less drink being available was good for Scotland. It argued: "The transformation of New Year celebrations brought about by the war is not without its advantages. The New Year in Scotland is traditionally associated with Bachanalian revelry. We probably were never quite so black as we have been painted, and those earnest social reformers who were wont to take a Hogmanay stroll along the Trongate and who reported that the lieges were mostly drunk, must have suffered from a sort of moral myopia.

"When the bottle was cheap and the festive mood was upon us we were as a community perhaps unwisely partial to the bottle. One recalls the sound of crashing glass punctuating the tintinnabulation of the joy bells of the old Tollbooth at midnight on Hogmanay, and gregarious treating at street corner and close mouth. The bottle will doubtless pass during the ensuing festivities but less frequently and eventually less harmfully, for the national beverage is now not only the price of what good wine used to be but its potency has been reduced.

"We will of necessity celebrate this New Year in subdued mood. But if by a small exercise of the imagination we try to visualise the infinitely harder lot of the brave men on land and sea who are safeguarding our homes during this season of rejoicing we shall find that our civilian hardships and discomforts, the little irritations, are very trivial indeed."

It is of course a passing thought that any journalist who types out "tintinnabulation" has already reached for the bottle.

Perhaps tongue in cheek, The Herald reported that there was talk of setting up communal kitchens for the rich in Belgravia and Mayfair as they did not know how to cook with their servants leaving to serve in war work or bus conducting. Ice cream was to be banned from January due to sugar shortages, and a Girvan dairyman was fined £3 for selling a quarter pound of butter at more than the Maximum Prices (Butter) Order.

Falkirk Parish Council was charged with hoarding after buying 800 pounds of tea for the poorhouse, and a couple in South Shields were fined for concealing their 27-year-old son in their front room for two years which he never left, saying he was not strong enough to join the Army.

At the front, The Herald cheerfully reported that batteries fired their guns in the pattern of 1, 9, 1, 8 in order to spell out the new year. Snow had fallen, and brightened up the view from the trenches. Impromptu skis and sledges were fashioned. Reported a war correspondent: "One officer careened and revolved in an old fashioned circular bath tub of zinc borrowed from a fellow mess member absent on leave. When the tub was returned to its owner it was brightly polished underneath but so battered and full of holes it was rather more fit to hold hay than water."

He then waxed lyrical: "Though few regrets are wasted on the dying date the new is faced with a keen eye and a smile. As 1917 goes out, the attitude of our soldiers is, 'We’ve taken some hard knocks during the past year and we’ve landed a whole lot more but all we’ve done to Fritz thus far is but a taste to what we’re going to give him during 1918 that’s just about to begin'."

Well you can't quite imagine them saying that, but it was comforting for the folks back home.

Fifty years later, as Scotland faced 1968, the First World War was but a memory, but hardships remained, this time of an economic nature. Prime Minister Harold Wilson had devalued the pound, and negotiations to join the Common Market were proving difficult, due to President de Gaulle's obduracy.

The Herald described 1967 as "without doubt one of the bleakest most disastrous years in post-war British history. The devaluation of the pound has not solved Britain’s economic problems and has not brought with it a proper appreciation in Government circles of the fundamental economic and social changed required to put Britain back on her feet."

Hogmanay celebrations were described as "fairly quiet” in Glasgow. Police divisions reported “only a few drunks, a few breaches of the peace, and very few drivers involved in drink charges.” The Herald even asked a doctor how to deal with a hangover and he remarked: "Most of the ardently advocated remedies are ineffective. The measure most highly esteemed is the consumption of a pint of water before retiring – but anyone sufficiently composed to do this is perhaps unlikely to suffer anyway." His answer? "Drink less." Well that was insightful.

A Herald reader in the letters page criticised the BBC for showing the Beatles' film Magical Mystery Tour at Christmas stating: "I don't believe I have ever sat through such a mess of disconnected, hyper-nonsensical rubbish in all my experience of TV viewing."

The New Year's Honours List brought no reward for Celtic despite the club's European Cup win. The Herald speculated it was because of the team's fall from grace in the ensuing World Club Championship in Montevideo, Uruguay, when Celtic had four players sent off. The Herald quoted an unnamed football official who said there would be widespread disappointment among Celtic supporters but he felt other people in Scottish football would not be unduly concerned. That was harsh.

And perhaps as a precursor to Rikki Fulton's comic creation, the Rev I.M. Jolly, the minister at Glasgow Cathedral, Dr William Morris, even debunked the sense of renewal that a New Year brings, stating in his New Year sermon that New Year's Day had no significance and was just another day like any other. We should have a sense of renewal every day, not just on one at the start of January. "We look out in dismay," he said, " on a countryside emptied of meaning and purpose by political apathy and moral cynicism and the kind of cleverness which has nothing more than a giggle to offer for the hope of mankind.” It's a sentiment that could easily be repeated today. So perhaps that is the real message of New Year looking back over the years. As the French say: "Plus ça change, plus c' est la même chose."

And remember what the doctor says – drink less.