The Scottish name commonly used for Edinburgh's multi-day New Year's celebration is Hogmanay.
Hogmanay is Scotland's New Year festival, with Edinburgh's modern events often including concerts, torchlight processions, street parties, and fireworks. The precise origins of the word are uncertain; proposed explanations connect it with Scots, French, Norse, and Gaelic influences, but no single derivation is universally accepted.
A central custom is first-footing. The first person to enter a household after midnight traditionally brings symbolic gifts such as shortbread, coal, salt, or whisky, representing warmth, food, flavor, and good fortune. In some traditions, a dark-haired first footer was considered especially lucky.
Hogmanay is not simply another name for Burns Night, which honors poet Robert Burns on January 25. Scotland's New Year customs also include singing “Auld Lang Syne,” a song strongly associated with Burns and with New Year's celebrations around the world.