No object is dropped from the wall of Edinburgh Castle at midnight during Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebration.
Edinburgh’s Hogmanay is a major Scottish New Year festival featuring concerts, street events, torchlight processions, and fireworks. The castle is a dramatic visual backdrop for the midnight fireworks, which can create the mistaken impression that a ceremonial object descends from the castle. The event’s best-known countdown feature is the display itself, not a ball-drop mechanism.
Ball drops are strongly associated with New York City’s Times Square, where the Times Square Ball descends during the final minute of the year. Edinburgh’s tradition is also distinct from the custom of “first-footing,” in which the first visitor to enter a home after midnight is associated with good fortune. Hogmanay is the Scottish New Year celebration, but its public spectacle does not use a castle ball drop.