Scottish Country Dance of the Day

It's fruitcake weather! This delightful jig has plenty of turns, teapot figures and chases, rotationally appropriate for a Stir-up Sunday! There's no cake with such a large percentage of admirers and detractors as the ubiquitous holiday fruitcake! Coming early this year, "Stir-up Sunday" is traditionally the Sunday before Advent to begin holiday baking, particularly for plum puddings or soused fruitcakes. Love them or hate them, when a fruitcake contains a good deal of alcohol and sugar it can remain edible for many years! Many antique fruitcakes remain extant and are cherished by their owners. The most recent archaeological find of a preserved fruitcake was a 106-year-old fruitcake discovered in 2017 by the Antarctic Heritage Trust in a hut on Cape Adare, part of the 1913 Terra Nova expedition let by Robert Falcon Scott. Wrapped in paper and the remains of a tin, the fruitcake was deemed "in excellent condition," according to the trust, and looking and smelling "almost edible"! As far as fruitcakes, go, you can't ask for more than that! 🤪 🍰 🍍 🍐 🍋 🍒

Happy St. Nicholas' Day with a twisting and turning reel inspired by that most recognizable of holiday treats, the candy cane! If you successfully avoided the Krampus last night and left out your ghillies, you might have woken to find them filled with delightful treat from St. Nicholas himself! On St. Nicholas Eve, many children prepare their shoes with carrots and hay for St. Nick's horse or donkey, hoping to find small gifts in return—perhaps fruits, nuts, chocolates, candies, cookies, coins, poems, riddles, or even a candy cane! Legend has it that the iconic candy cane traces its shape back to a 17th-century German choirmaster, who bent the hard candy into the form of a shepherd’s staff to remind children of Jesus as the Good Shepherd. As the patron saint of children and shepherd to his people, St. Nicholas is often depicted with a crozier, a hook-shaped staff symbolizing his role as a spiritual guide. In addition to candy canes, the feast of St. Nicholas is celebrated with other traditional treats, like St. Nicholas cookies. These spiced holiday cookies, reminiscent of gingerbread, feature warm flavors such as cloves, anise, pepper, cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and allspice—though notably without molasses! ❤️ 🤍 ❤️ 🎅🏻 🍬🍬🍬

The "brownie," that delectable treat straddling the line between a cookie and a cake, shares more than just its name with the mythical brownie of folklore—a legendary creature from the tales of Scotland and England. Described as "a small personage with a wrinkled visage, short curly brown hair, and clad in a brown mantle and hood," the brownie was believed to attach itself to households, aiding with chores under cover of night. Brownies worked in exchange for small offerings like porridge or honey, or a seat by the hearth, but they despised being seen or receiving gifts that implied payment—especially clothing, which was considered an affront! One famous tale, The Brownie of Blednoch, tells of Aiken-Drum, a brownie who arrives in town, diligently helps many of the townsfolk with their tasks, but vanishes after a well-meaning woman, feeling his efforts were underappreciated, gifts him a new pair of trousers. Alas, no good deed goes unpunished. But you can use this straightforward 32 bar reel to teach aspiring brownies reels of three with impunity. Or for a recipe even the pickiest brownie wouldn’t refuse: visit the dance page for chocolate brownies stuffed with buttery shortbread! Yum! 🤎 🤎 🤎🧝 🍪

In Mexico, where the beautiful Poinsettia flower originates, it is traditionally displayed around the Dia de la Virgen, December 12, which coincidentally, marks the passing of namesake American botanist, Joel Roberts Poinsett, who discovered the plant while visiting in Southern Mexico and helped to popularize it.

Raid the pantry for lingonberries and saffron buns—it's time to dance and indulge in St. Lucy's Day delights! This cherished feast day, celebrated in many countries, especially Italy, Croatia, and Scandinavia, marks a special moment in the Yule season. Originally aligned with the solstice on the Julian calendar, St. Lucy's Day is rich with traditions that symbolize hope and renewal. In keeping with custom, girls dress in flowing white gowns adorned with red sashes and wear crowns of candles set upon wreaths of evergreen lingonberries, representing life emerging after winter's darkness. Children join in the festive spirit, dressing as Swedish tomtar (gnomes), gingerbread men, and stjärngossar ("star boys"), and participating in joyful caroling processions. No St. Lucy's Day celebration is complete without its iconic treats: Pepparkakor (ginger snap biscuits) and Lussekatter (golden saffron buns). Dance through the day and savor these festive flavors—recipe included with the dance, an elegant 40 bar 4 couple strathspey which contains the "St Lucia exchange" figure, an exchange of ALL dancers from 2 wheels at the top and bottom of the set, setting one in mind of the beautiful lingonberry wreaths ! ❤️ 🤍 💚 💛 👑 🕯️🕯️🕯️🎄

A favorite celebratory beverage, punch appears everywhere in Dickens' novels whenever a drop of good cheer is called for, most famously at the Cratchit's Christmas dinner in "A Christmas Carol." Ten years after its publication, Charles Dickens began to give public performances of his work. On performance days Dickens stuck to a rather bizarre, punch-related routine. He had two tablespoons of rum flavoured with fresh cream for breakfast, a pint of champagne for tea, and half an hour before the start of his performance, would drink a raw egg beaten into a tumbler of sherry. Dickens' favorite hot gin punch contained Hendrick's gin, Madeira, dark brown sugar, lemon peel, orange peel, 1 pineapple, cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg!

The Christmas Cracker became popular in Victorian times beginning in 1847, when confectioner Tom Smith (1823–1869) of London created the crackers to help flagging sales of his bon-bon sweets which he sold in a twist of paper. Smith started by inserting love messages into the wrappers of the sweets (similar to fortune cookies) but then added the "crackle" and "bang" mechanism allegedly after hearing the crackle of a log he had just put on a fire! 🎉 👑 🎄

But adding a Crumbly Christmas Cookie Ceilidh to your holiday dance party is a wonderful way to "deck the halls" with something tasty! A "Cookie Shine" is a cookie-sharing party! So whether you refer to them as biscuits, cookies, treats, or something else, bring a baker's dozen of kilted gingerbread men to your next dance party for some holiday fun! While crisp cookies are known as "biscuits" in most English-speaking countries outside the US and Canada, the term "cookie" is often reserved for chewier varieties. In Scotland, however, a "cookie" might also refer to a plain bun, adding a local twist to the name. The word itself traces back to the Dutch term koekje—or its informal dialect version koekie—meaning "little cake." It made its way into American English during the early 1600s with the Dutch settlers of New Netherland. Adding to the cookie lore is the age-old debate: to dunk or not to dunk? This simple act, steeped in social customs, has even caught the attention of physicists, who study how well cookies hold liquid before crumbling. This 32 bar very lively reel with its namesake tune, rights and lefts, and half poussettes will definitely help you burn off those visits to the cookie table! 🤪 🎄 🎅 🍪 🍪 🍪

If you've overserved yourself at the dessert table, you may feel the need to "shake the pudding down"! The expression "shake the pudding down" is a colloquial phrase that originates from the act of settling one's food, particularly a heavy or filling meal, in the stomach. This lively dance will definitely shake things up, hopefully in the right direction! The sweet plum and figgy puddings we associate with Christmas have their origins in much heartier fare—and, surprisingly, they rarely contained actual plums or figs! In 14th-century Britain, a savory dish combining beef, mutton, raisins, prunes, wine, and spices took the form of a soup-like concoction. Over time, the addition of grains transformed it into a thicker porridge called "frumenty." By Elizabethan times, as preparations for Christmas meals grew more elaborate, raisins, currants, and the then-popular prunes were incorporated into the mix. These ingredients were stored in animal stomachs or intestines, forming sausage-like shapes to be served throughout the festive season. During this era, "plum" became a general term for dried fruits, and "figgy" became synonymous with raisins. Shake it up, dancers! 💜 🤎 💜 🍬 🍬 🍬

A Yule log (or bûche de Noël) is a traditional holiday dessert served near Christmas, especially in Belgium, France, Switzerland, Canada, Lebanon and several former French colonies, as well as the United Kingdom and Catalonia. Made of sponge cake to resemble a miniature actual Yule log, it is a form of sweet roulade, swiss roll, or jelly roll - a sponge cake filled with cream, jam or icing. In the UK, a similarly inspired everyday dessert, Jam Roly-Poly, is made with a flat-rolled suet pudding rather than cake, then filled with jam and served hot with custard. For added naming whimsy, this dessert is also called Shirt-Sleeve pudding, DeCleats' Arm, Dead Man's Arm or Dead Man's Leg! Pastry, cake, puddings, it's all good, especially during the holiday season! Recipe Included: Pistachio Roulade with Raspberries and White Chocolate

Folk tales of runaway food type are found in Germany, the British Isles, Eastern Europe, as well the United States. Similar tales include "The Runaway Pancake" from Germany and Scandinavia, "The Roule Galette" from France, and "The Wee Bannock" from Scotland. In Hungary,  the tale "The Little Dumpling," contrary to the title, refers not to a dumpling, but to the Hungarian version of runaway head cheese! ​ Recipe included: Gingerbread Shortbread with a Nutmeg Glaze

Tchaikovsky's famous Christmas-themed ballet, "The Nutcracker" debuted on Dec. 18, 1892 in St. Petersburg, Russia. Initially unsuccessful, it has now become a global Christmas tradition and an annual opportunity at ballet studios for aspiring ballerinas all over the world. Many highland dance studios and even traditional ballet companies also celebrate the season with their own Scottish Dance themed Nutcracker performances or with a kilt or two appearing in one or more scenes! One of the most anticipated dances of the ballet, the " Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" occurs in the third movement, set in the Land of Sweets, and is distinguished for its memorable use of the celesta, a piano-like instrument that sounds like the tinkling of bells! 🌰 🎄 🎁 🩰

Although one of the most distinctive and recognized of holiday candies, ribbon candy has the dubious honour of being one of the most disliked of Christmas candies (perhaps for its unwieldy shape for eating and for its incongruously disappointing flavor). In fact, some people are surprised to learn that it is even edible! Regardless, whichever confectionery vision dances in your head - be it marzipan, maple sugar candy, chocolate Santas, candy canes, or even hard ribbon candy, there is much to delight the eye and plenty of selections for decorating gingerbread or candy houses! Although first made by confectioners by modeling the wavy form around the candy maker’s thumb, by the 1800s weaving and twisting mechanical crimpers were invented to shape the ribbons of ribbon candy that we recognize today. 🎄 🍭 🍬

If you're lucky enough to have a Scottish fiddler at your Christmas party, give the fiddler some porter, or something stronger!

Oh my goodness! One thing people certainly didn't bother with in the good old days was concern over child psychology! The Krampus, a terrifying creature of European Christmas folklore, historically visits the night of December 5th on the eve of St. Nicholas Day and punishes and spirits away naughty boys and girls! Europeans gleefully exchanged Christmas cards featuring the Krampus and hapless children during 1800s in the form of Krampuskarten. These darkly humoured cards are highly collectible today and making a bit of comeback! So whether you're feeling particularly naughty or nice this Christmas dancing season, channel your inner child this Krampusnacht with a bit of "reel" naughtiness, starting off with a "Spiral Progression" figure! And Merry Krampus! 😲 👹 🎄 🎅 ❄️

A "Clootie/Cloutie Dumpling" is the Scottish version of a Christmas pudding. Firstly and most importantly, it is a pudding boiled in a "clout," a cloth. The tradition comes from the days before people had ovens and so cooked much of their food by boiling ingredients in huge pots. Although flour, suet, dried fruit and spices always feature, regional variations, like the addition of treacle, feature in Fife and other areas. And like all traditional puddings, clootie dumplings come with their own set of traditions. When it's being made everyone in the household should give it a good skelp – or smack – to make sure it has a nice round shape! Serve with custard. 🎄 🥮

Enjoying Christmas lights this season? Have you put up some of your own? Congratulations! One of the magical mysteries of Christmas is ... if Christmas lights spend all year in a stationary box, how do they manage to arrange themselves into such spectacular tangles and snarls! Physicists have studied this Yuletide variant of knot theory by placing strings of various lengths and stiffness in a box, shaking it around, and studying the number of knots that form. Apparently, and we know this intuitively, it takes “surprisingly little motion” for knots to form, and it’s much easier to accidentally form a knot than undo one! Entanglements" of this sort started in 1882 when Edward Johnson, an inventor in Thomas Edison's lab, came up with the electrifying idea of an alternative to the traditional candles on a tree, which were lovely, but a fire hazard. Johnson hand-wired 80 red, white and blue light bulbs and strung them together around a cut tree, placed the trunk on a revolving pedestal, and powered it all by a generator. It was an instant sensation! In 1894 President Cleveland put electric lights on the White House tree, and by the 1930s, colored bulbs and cones were everywhere during Christmas season and most likely, tangling themselves during the rest of the year. Today, light displays are synchronized to music, projected onto buildings, and limited only by one's imagination, energy bills, and your neighbor's tolerance. This raucous 64 bar reel contains a humorous christmas tree setting figure, lots of turns, double figures of eight and circles to represent the lights, and generously, no knot figures! 🤪 ❤️ 💚 💙 💛 🌟 🎄 🌟

The tradition of making decorated gingerbread houses started in Germany in the early 1800s, most likely as a result of the wider publication of the Grimm's fairy tales, with the description of the witch's edible sugar and bread house in the folk tale of Hansel & Gretel. Gingerbread making, however, goes back centuries and is specialized and highly prized art.  In the 17th century, only professional gingerbread bakers were permitted to bake it (except at Christmas and Easter, when such restrictions were relaxed).

Originally referring to a confit or sweetmeats shaped as plums, the term "sugar plum" acquired new meaning past the 1600s. If your mouth was "full of sugar plums," it meant that you spoke sweet (but possibly deceitful) words. If you "stuffed another's mouth with sugar plums," that referred to a sop or bribe that would shut someone up. Nowadays, the term plum is still used to refer to an especially desirable thing, such as a prize, or a choice job or appointment.

In the Victorian language of the flowers, the meaning ascribed to the mistletoe plant is "Kiss me" or "Affection." Mistletoe is a hemiparasitic plant (a plant parasitic under natural conditions, but photosynthetic to some degree) that appears visibly green on trees that have gone dormant in the winter, collected for Christmas celebrations. The ancient custom of kissing under the mistletoe is first documented in 1500s in Europe, and by the 1820s, reappears in American author Washington Irving's collection of “Christmas Eve" stories. In Irving’s day, each time a couple kissed under a mistletoe sprig, they removed one of the white berries. When the berries were all gone, so was the license to kiss! ❤️🌱 💚