Christmas itself was until recent times a purely Religious festival and New Year was and still is the main holiday for Scots. Christmas was not traditionally celebrated in Scotland because it was banned for nearly 400 years until the 1950's. Hogmanay was the real traditional celebration. The reason Christmas was not celebrated until recently go back to the time of John Knox in the 1580's as it was seen to be papist in origin - the ban was strictly enforced in law.

Until recently, Christmas was fairly low key. It wasn't even a public holiday until 1958. Up till then, people worked normally on Christmas day, although the children did get presents. Therefore the Christmas 'traditions' in Scotland are pretty much the same modern US version. If you wanted to have a real traditional Scottish Christmas, you should go into work on Christmas day! In 1997/98 and 2001/2002 there were strikes at Scottish banks because the bank staff were getting English holidays rather than the Scottish ones which have more time off at New Year.