New Year, Valentine's Day, April Fool's Day and days for parents

New Year's Day, 1 January, is a public holiday. Most of the partying happens the night before, on New Year's Eve (31 December). The Scots have their own name for 31 December, Hogmanay, and in Scotland 2 January is a public holiday as well. For some Scots, Hogmanay matters even more than Christmas.

There is a reason for that. After the Reformation, Scotland's Presbyterian Church thought Christmas was too "Catholic" and for hundreds of years discouraged people from celebrating it. Christmas Day only became a public holiday in Scotland in 1958, so the big celebrations moved to New Year's Eve. At midnight people join hands and sing Auld Lang Syne, the song by the poet Robert Burns, and the first visitor to step into a home in the new year is said to decide the family's luck for the whole year.

On Valentine's Day, 14 February, couples give each other cards and presents. Sometimes people send a card without signing it to someone they secretly like.

On April Fool's Day, 1 April, people play tricks on each other, but only until midday. TV programmes and newspapers often run made-up April Fool stories as well.

The most famous of these is still the BBC's. On 1 April 1957 its current affairs programme Panorama showed a film of a Swiss family picking spaghetti from trees, and quite a few viewers phoned in to ask how they could grow their own.

Mothering Sunday, also called Mother's Day, falls three weeks before Easter Sunday. Children send their mothers a card or buy them a present. Fathers get their turn on Father's Day, the third Sunday in June.

Watch out if you come from the USA or many other countries, where Mother's Day is the second Sunday in May. In the UK, Mothering Sunday moves with Easter, so it usually falls in March.

Chapter contents: Customs and Traditions