Crime writer Val McDermid has criticised Edinburgh for over-commercialising the city’s Hogmanay and making it harder for local residents to have their own new year parties.
The best-selling author suggested celebrating Hogmanay had been turned into a “miserable process” in the Scottish capital due to the disruption caused by the official festivities.
She criticised the need for Edinburgh’s residents to secure special passes to get to and from their own homes and suggested they were “effectively forbidden” from hosting private parties.
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The Fife-born author criticises Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations at length in a new memoir celebrating the winter season in Scotland, in which she bemoans the decline of traditional new year festivities.
McDermid, who has had a home in the city for years, said Edinburgh’s official new year celebrations, which have been running for more than 30 years, were now “all about “spending money”.
And she only suggested the city’s new year festival, which now encompass four days of official events, go on for far too long. The Hogmanay festival currently gets more than £1m in annual funding from the Scottish Government and Edinburgh City Council.
McDermid has spoken out less than a decade after being commissioned by the Hogmanay year festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival to write a new short story which was projected into historic buildings around the city to herald the new year.
McDermid was one of the star attractions at last year’s Christmas festival in the city when Unique Events and Assembly – who also produce the Hogmanay on behalf of the city council - booked the crime writer and former First Minister Nicola Sturgeon for an in-conversation event.
Ms Sturgeon, a close friend of the crime writer, will be appearing in the closing event of the forthcoming Hogmanay festival. Edinburgh Makar Michael Pedersen and Edinburgh-born rock singer Shirley Manson will be hosting the event at Portobello Town Hall, which will also feature an appearance from Teenage Fanclub frontman Norman Blake.
Writing in her new book, Winter, McDermid claims traditional Hogmanay celebrations have “ebbed away” in Scotland over the past 30 years and suggests they “only exist nowadays” in The Broons cartoon strip.
She writes: “Large-scale celebrations in town and city centres, special dinners in restaurants, and late licences in clubs and bars have replaced those domestic events that now feel quaint in the memory.
“In the capital, for example, we now have Edinburgh’s Hogmanay, a giant street party with live music, spectacular fireworks and thousands of people celebrating with all the stops pulled out.
“Some streets in the city are closed off for days in advance to facilitate the event. I’ll admit to being grumpy that I’m forced to make expensive detours to walk across the centre of my own city.
“Some residents need to have a special permit to get to and from their own residencies in the absence of an expensive ticket for the celebrations, effectively forbidden from having private parties in their own homes.
“Yes, the fireworks are visible from miles away, but the street party that used to be spontaneous and free-flowing around Princes Street and its gardens is no more.”
In the book, McDermid said she had hoped the cancellation of events last year due to bad weather in the city would have led to some people deciding to “rock up anyway and have an impromptu street party,” especially after the weather conditions eased on Hogmanay night.
Edinburgh author Irvine Welsh called for the city's streets to be given "back to the people" on Hogmanay after organisers of the new year festival urged revellers not to visit the city centre unless were going to an event or venue after they were forced to call off the main street party and the fireworks above Edinburgh Castle.
In her new book, McDermid writes: “Only a few people turned up on Princes Street. Either they’d swiftly made other plans – in which case, good for them – or they’d lost their nerve on becoming part of an arms-open-wide kind of celebration among strangers. And that makes me even more sad.”
Writing in the book, McDermid said she had “given up” on celebrating Hogmanay in Edinburgh and instead heads to a fishing village in her native Fife.
However she said she “mourns” the spontaneous Hogmanay gatherings in the square in her home town of Kirkcaldy.
“Now there nothing. The town square stands empty and unwelcoming. People pass each other in the town centre in awkward silence with eyes averted. It’s as if the square’s been turned into a space we no longer have a common claim over.”
Speaking at an in-conversation launch event for the book with fellow author Doug Johnstone in Edinburgh, McDermid said: “I think we’ve kind of lost the sense of coming together at Hogmanay.
“We’ve got this great commercial Edinburgh’s Hogmanay that goes on for about three months. It’s all about spending money. You have to pay to get into your own street.
“It lost that sense first footing, talking to your neighbours and spending time with people that you know vaguely but then got to know a bit better.
“We now go through to Fife for new year. We all meet down at the harbour and take bottles of whisky with us.
“In Edinburgh, Hogmanay can be quite a miserable process.”
Johnstone, who lives in Edinburgh, said: "I used to go to the Tron (in Edinburgh) and then go to folks' parties afterwards.
"I remember the very first year they put up barriers and started doing tickets. We were outraged, absolutely outraged."
In an interview to promote the book, McDermid said: “Why would you want to be in Edinburgh for Hogmanay these days, honestly?
"Streets are closed off. People who live within the cordon have to get special passes to go to their own houses, and they can’t have parties because they can’t get guest passes.”
Edinburgh's Hogmanay festival declined to respond to McDermid's criticisms of the Hogmanay festival, which runs from December 29 till January 1.
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