Burns Night

"Auld Lang Syne"...in this country it's one of the most commonly known songs, of which most people know all of five words. It can be heard at New Year's parties and on the streets when the clock strikes midnight on December 31st each year, but where does it come from? Who wrote it?

The answer is Robert Burns, a Scottish poet who lived in the late 1700's and is generally regarded as the man in that country. Besides "Auld Lang Syne", he wrote many other highly regarded poems and even collected folk stories and songs from around Scotland for preservation, and in some cases like "Scots Wha Hae" (the unofficial Scottish national anthem for a long time), inspiration.

Burns is so highly regarded that Scottish emigrants (and fans of his poetry too, I suppose) all over the world come together on or around the anniversary of his birth, January 25th, to celebrate in what's become known as "Burns Night". The celebration is fairly elaborate, and sometimes very formal, a testament to how highly Burns is still regarded.

There is always a meal shared by all attendants called the "Burns Supper", unsurprisingly. A loose outline of the supper's order of events is outlined at Wikipedia (hopefully by people who actually go to these things). I found the Selkirk Grace, commonly said before the meal, particularly fun to read for whatever reason:

"Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some wad eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit."

-the Selkirk Grace

So eat some haggis, have a shot or 3 of some good Scotch Whiskey, and end the night with a good rendition of "Auld Lang Syne".

But please, make sure to learn the words first...