2 January (Scotland) 2027

Type of holiday: bank holiday, a non-working day.

2 January is a bank holiday in Scotland and nowhere else in the United Kingdom. Cross the border and it is an ordinary Tuesday, Wednesday or whatever the calendar has produced, with banks open in Carlisle while their branches in Dumfries are shut. It is the clearest single illustration of the fact that the UK does not have one holiday calendar but three, drawn up separately for England and Wales, for Scotland and for Northern Ireland.

The reason lies in Hogmanay. For a long stretch of Scottish history, following the Reformation, Christmas was not celebrated publicly and was an ordinary working day — it did not become a public holiday in Scotland until 1958. The midwinter festivities that the rest of Britain attached to Christmas attached themselves in Scotland to the turn of the year, and they spread across two days rather than one. Recognising 2 January simply put a legal frame around a break that Scottish workplaces had long taken.

What actually happens

The customs belong to the night before rather than the morning after. First-footing — the first person over the threshold after midnight, traditionally carrying coal, shortbread or whisky — still has real currency in Scottish households. Edinburgh runs one of the larger street parties in Europe, and on 1 January the swimmers of the Loony Dook go into the Firth of Forth at South Queensferry. By the second day the mood is domestic: leftovers, visiting, and in Orkney the mass street handball of the Kirkwall Ba', which is played on New Year's Day as well as at Christmas.

The substitute day, doubled

Because Scotland holds two consecutive dates, the substitute rule can stack. When 1 January is a Saturday and 2 January a Sunday, neither is a working day to begin with, so Scotland takes Monday 3 and Tuesday 4 January instead. When 2 January alone falls on a Sunday, the Monday is the substitute. Payroll and rota software written for a single UK list gets this wrong more often than any other British holiday.

On this site the day counts as a regional holiday. It appears in the calendar and on this page, but it is not deducted from a UK-wide working-day total, because for the great majority of the country it is a working day. Anyone counting deadlines against a Scottish office, bank or court should take it out by hand.