Scotland celebrates New Year's Eve with the Hogmanay custom called first-footing.
A first-footer is the first person to enter a home after midnight or after the start of the new year. In traditional accounts, the visitor brings symbolic gifts such as coal for warmth, shortbread for food, salt, or whisky for hospitality. The visit is meant to influence the household's luck for the year ahead.
Some versions of the custom attach significance to the visitor's appearance, especially whether the first-footer is tall and dark-haired. Historical explanations for that preference are often linked to older cultural ideas about luck and to memories of Viking raids, although those explanations are not uniform across Scotland and should not be treated as a single proven origin.
First-footing is part of Hogmanay, Scotland's New Year's celebration, but practices differ between families and regions. It is not the same as Edinburgh's large public Hogmanay festival. The custom also overlaps with broader European traditions in which the first person or first action of a new year is considered an omen.