Waters of life

Even though they efface the landscape, the snows of midwinter make the deeper symbolism more apparent. The psychic differences between the Northern and the Southern Kingdoms, which long predate Alex Salmond, are most explicit in this season.

When I was a child, Christmas Day was not a bank holiday in Scotland. It was celebrated, but only as a trial match for the major event: Hogmanay. No one has satisfactorily explained its etymology, but the word is so appropriate. It has a moral onomatopeia. Christmas: despite the best efforts of commerce, it has not lost contact with its origins as the greatest festival of all. Wassailing, merry gentlemen — merry everyone — punch, porter and port, great heartening fires, while the weather is a mere decoration: ‘comfort and joy’ may come from one of the shallower carols, but it expresses the English Christmas ethos.

Hogmanay is pre-Christian, and has no savour of the New Testament; the Scots have always preferred the Old. At Hogmanay, the elements cannot be expected to behave just because there is a star in the sky and the church bells are ding-donging merrily (an even shallower carol). Untamed, nature must be defied. As if to give the forces of darkness time to muster, a proper Hogmanay does not start until -midnight. Thereafter, it is black-avised men struggling along snowy byways, bearing lumps of coal and bottles of whisky. Whisky’s etymology is Gaelic. At Christmas, the English have the way, the truth and the life. At Hogmanay, the Scots have the water of life.

What a water it can be. Recently, I had the pleasure of drinking a bottle of Ardbeg, Committee Reserve. I have never had a finer whisky, and rarely tasted a more expensive one.