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Of Christmas past

As you try to keep your head above the jingling, glittering, till-ringing tide that overwhelms us at Christmas, remember that it was not always thus – particularly in Scotland, when the day wasn't even a public holiday until the late 1950s, writes Jim Gilchrist. I can remember, during the 1960s, helping clear snow off the petrol pumps on my father's garage forecourt, which would be open for the morning at least – they may have been white Christmases then, but for many of us they were also working Christmases.

A backwards browse through the archives shows how we have marked the festival – sometimes reluctantly – over the centuries, from working on the day in the 1950s, back through the invention of the Christmas card in the 1800s, to public remonstrance for "keeping yule" three centuries earlier, at a time when celebration was effectively banned by the all-powerful reformed church.

Full story at The Scotsman.