First Footing: Who Crosses the Threshold First

In Scotland, the first person to step over your threshold after midnight on Hogmanay is your first-foot, and tradition says they bring the luck for the whole year ahead. The ideal first-foot is a tall, dark-haired man carrying a small gift: a lump of coal, something to eat, a drink to toast the house. The custom is still kept across Scotland and parts of northern England, and it travelled with Scottish families wherever they settled. Here is what happens, what the gifts mean, and what is known, and not known, about where it came from.

What is first footing?

First-footing is the visit, and the first-foot (or first-footer) is the visitor. Intangible Cultural Heritage Scotland, the national inventory supported by Museums Galleries Scotland, defines the first-foot as the first person to enter your house or cross your threshold after midnight on 31 December. In Scots, the custom is often called the first-fit, and the gift the visitor brings is a handsel, a word the Scots Language Centre explains as something given by hand.

The idea behind it is simple: the start of the year sets the tone for everything that follows. A lucky first visitor means a lucky year for the household; an unlucky one, or none at all, is a poor start. In the past, visits could carry on well into New Year’s Day, Ne’erday in Scots, as friends and neighbours went from house to house.

Who should be the first-foot?

The traditional answer: a tall, dark-haired man. Britannica, Intangible Cultural Heritage Scotland and the folklorists Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud all record the preference for dark hair, and many places also wanted the first-foot to be a man.

Who was thought unlucky: in many accounts, a woman, or a man with fair or red hair. A few places in England turned the rule around and insisted on a fair-haired visitor, as Simpson and Roud note, which shows how local these beliefs could be.

Who it really is today: whoever knocks first. Intangible Cultural Heritage Scotland puts it kindly: anyone can be someone’s first-foot. One rule is kept almost everywhere: the first-foot must come in from outside, so they cannot already be in the house when the clock strikes. In some homes, a dark-haired member of the family slips out just before midnight and knocks to be let in again.

The first footing gift

A first-foot should never arrive empty-handed. The gifts vary from family to family, but the same few come up again and again, each with a meaning that is usually given like this:

• A lump of coal, for warmth: a fire in the hearth all year. Some first-foots put it straight on the fire.
• Black bun or shortbread, for food on the table. Black bun is a rich, dark fruit cake baked inside a pastry case.
• Salt, for flavour, and in older accounts for luck. It is less common now.
• A dram of whisky, for good cheer, and to toast the house.
• A silver coin, sometimes, for prosperity.

Intangible Cultural Heritage Scotland lists coal, whisky and black bun; the National Trust for Scotland adds salt and bread. Simpson and Roud found that bread and coal were the most common gifts in England, sometimes with “something green”.

How a first-foot is welcomed

The first-foot knocks, is let in, and wishes everyone a Happy New Year. In return the household offers food and drink: a dram, a slice of cake, a seat by the fire. Simpson and Roud record first-foots poking the fire or setting their coal on it, and coming in by the front door and leaving by the back.

In Scotland, first-footing has traditionally been more than a doorstep visit. It often turned into a long night of calls, songs and stories, with Auld Lang Syne, the song Robert Burns wrote down from older verses, sung at midnight with arms linked.

Before midnight: redding the house

The work starts earlier in the evening. The National Trust for Scotland describes redding, giving the house a thorough clean before the New Year, so that the year starts fresh. Some people also hold that it’s bad luck to clean or do the laundry on New Year’s Day itself, which is one more reason to get it done on Hogmanay.

First footing in Scotland: why New Year mattered so much

For a long time, New Year was Scotland’s great winter festival, and Christmas was not. After the Reformation, the Church of Scotland frowned on Christmas, and the National Trust for Scotland notes that an Act of the Scottish Parliament in 1640 made celebrating “Yule vacations” illegal. The festivities moved to the turn of the year. The Trust adds that Christmas Day only became a Scottish public holiday in 1958. In Scotland, 2 January is still a bank holiday as well as New Year’s Day.

The word Hogmanay itself is old: the Scots Language Centre says it has been used in Scots since at least the 17th century, and Simpson and Roud cite a Yorkshire household account of 1444. Where it comes from is uncertain. The explanation most often given, and the one the Oxford English Dictionary reports, is an old French word for a New Year gift, but several other theories exist, and none is proven.

Where first-footing comes from

Nobody knows for sure. What the records do show is surprising: Simpson and Roud write that neither the phrase nor the custom of first-footing can be traced before about 1800, even in Scotland, and that most of the beliefs about who makes a lucky first-foot appear only from the 1850s.

That hasn’t stopped the stories. The most popular one says that fair or red hair was feared because, centuries ago, a tall blond stranger at the door might have been a Viking raider. It makes a good tale, but there is no evidence for it, and it sits awkwardly with how late the first records are. Other writers point to older door-to-door customs at Samhain and Christmas, which moved around the winter calendar over time. The honest answer is that first-footing grew up in its own way, and every region added rules of its own.

First-footing in northern England and Ireland

The custom is not only Scottish. Simpson and Roud found it known over most of England, but taken far more seriously in the north, where the name Hogmanay was used too. Even there the rules changed from place to place: accounts from Yorkshire disagree on whether the luckiest first-foot is dark or fair.

In Ireland, Shane Lehane, writing about New Year lore in Cork, describes a similar belief: a man should be the first through the door, the darker the better, and young boys were sent to neighbours’ houses to bring in the luck. Our guide to the Irish way of seeing out the old year has more of the Irish customs, from bread knocked against the door to the back door opened at midnight.

Keeping the tradition far from home

First-footing travels well, because all it needs is a door, a friend and a lump of coal. If you’re far from Scotland this year:

• Choose your first-foot in advance. A dark-haired friend or neighbour, a piece of coal (or a firelighter, if coal is hard to find) and a slice of shortbread will do.
• Send someone out before midnight. If your household has no visitors, the oldest custom of all is to send one of your own out of the door and let them knock to come back in.
• Bake a black bun. It keeps for weeks, so it can be made well ahead and shared with whoever comes first.
• Call home at Scotland’s midnight. In North America it falls in the afternoon or evening of 31 December; in Australia, on the morning of New Year’s Day. A video call from the doorstep, as the bells ring at home, keeps the family’s first-footing together.

For the wider story of the Scottish New Year, from the fire festivals to the bells, our page on Hogmanay customs tells it in full.

The New Year greeting in Scots and Gaelic

The first-foot’s words are simple: Happy New Year. In Scots, the Scots Language Centre gives the greeting as A Guid New Year. In Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig), it is Bliadhna Mhath Ùr. We don’t write out pronunciations: ask a speaker in the family, who will say it better than any spelling can.

Cards for the first visit of the year

Our New Year cards begin with a snowy village at midnight, the clock tower glowing and fireworks rising far off over the hills, and one of them shows the first-foot himself: a dark-coated visitor knocking at a cottage door, with coal, bread and a little bottle on the step. You can choose the day the card arrives, so it reaches family on Hogmanay or on New Year’s Day, with your own message underneath. For a scene from Scotland itself, our Scottish cards include a harbour village on Hogmanay, its clock almost at midnight, a parcel and a little coal waiting on a doorstep, and the greeting Bliadhna Mhath Ùr.