Hogmanay: amid the forced jollity is the party almost over as generations of traditions start to die out?

There’s a sense of almost forced jollity about Hogmanay these days. It means so much less than it did all those years ago when, as bairns, we barrelled into my gran’s house in Portobello for a night steeped in tradition - from first foots with lumps of coal to making sure the hoose was cleaned ready for every one to do their party pieces and eat their bodyweight in shortbread.

But that was 50 years ago, and everything has changed - not all for the better. We want the traditional feel of Hogmanay but minus all those uniquely Scottish traditions. Now it’s all about the party spirit, whether you like it or not.

I’ve spent New Year on my own and had to dig my heels deep into the floorboards to stop well meaning folk dragging me out - c’mon, they say, you can’t stay in. Why not? There’s nothing worse than being in a room full of folk intent on having a guid new year when all you fancy doing is putting your feet up, watching some telly and sloping off to bed.

I’ve also done big New Year parties from Jackie Os and Kitty’s to a ridiculously large house in one of Edinburgh’s poshest streets - it even had its own sauna - where we went right through the night, wolfed down bacon rolls for brekkie and piled into a van and rolled out in the directors’ car park at East Road where were handed tickets and told to enjoy the game. No idea what the score was!

I’ve also ‘done ’Princes Street’s giant party - once was enough. I’ve never bought the hype that Scotland’s celebrations are the greatest in the world - you can make the same claim for Sydney in Australia, Paris or Time Square in New York with the same absolute authority - and a night surrounded by folk with ‘see you Jimmie’ hats and novelty glasses screaming Auld Lang Syne badly out of tune convinced me never to return.

I’m old enough to remember when Edinburgh brought in the New Year without all the organised hullabaloo. All you needed were a few cans and a wee saunter to the Tron. These days you can’t get near it without a wristband.

The headlines this year said Edinburgh’s Hogmanay was cancelled as high winds hit the set up of the stages. It wasn’t. All that bit the dust was the hyped concert and TV coverage of revellers that the city banks on for those global headlines.

Edinburgh was actually awash with festivities and events. A list collated by Michael McLeod, who runs the Edinburgh Minute news round-up, was remarkably lengthy and much more exciting than the Princes Street nonsense. Strangely, the city didn’t seem that fussed about shouting about what else was on to give the tourists who came specially for Hogmanay an alternative experience.

Whatever they got up to, I do hope they tuned out of BBC and STV’s dog-tired Hogmanay shows and went exploring instead. Our two main stations seem determined to stage a party to which we are all invited, but which feels as flat as a cup of three-day old Irn Bru. The ghost of the white Heather Club lingers in the studio’s corridors, while the sketch shows which precede it generate polite titters rather than tears rolling down your cheeks.

For a nation that says it likes to party better than anyone else, we’re really not that braw at it. Maybe a quiet one is all we actually want …