Christian Christmas: Celebs Rumors

Now that it is finally here, people all over Scotland will be enjoying spending Christmas Day with their nearest and dearest. And while you are going through your usual festive rituals and traditions, take a moment to think what the end of the year would be like with no Christmas.

It's strange to imagine what December would be like without Christmas at the end of it, but that is exactly what it was like in Scotland for almost 400 years.

Marilyn Stasio Theater Critic In a radical departure from his usual intellectually esoteric style, Tom Stoppard’s new play is an intensely personal family drama. “Leopoldstadt,” which takes its name from the Jewish quarter of Vienna, doesn’t concern itself with quantum mechanics, metaphysical mysteries, Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle or Fermat’s Last Theorem — all topics the playwright has tackled in previous plays. But because it follows the disintegrating fortunes of a close-knit Jewish family (and their goyish relatives by marriage), it does deal, in its way, with chaos theory.  The set (Richard Hudson, with a shout-out to the props team), costumes (Brigitte Reiffenstuel) and especially the lighting design (Neil Austin) bathe the first scene in an aura of domestic harmony. It’s 1899 and almost Christmas in Vienna. Everyone in the tastefully furnished Merz household appears to be approaching the 20th century with glad hearts. The family trade is prospering, the men are successful businessmen and academics, the women are smart and articulate and the children are well-behaved.

Christmas celebrations with lights, markets and Santa all lighting up the country for the month of December. The pinnacle of winter, it's hard to imagine a time when Scotland didn't make a huge effort with its Christmas celebrations.