Burns Night
Next: January 25, 2027
Pipe in the haggis, raise a glass.
The story
Where it comes from
Burns Night celebrates Robert Burns, Scotland's national poet, on his birthday, 25 January. Five years after he died at 37, nine of his close friends, led by the Reverend Hamilton Paul, met at Burns Cottage in Alloway on 21 July 1801 to remember him. They ate haggis and sheep's head, recited 'Address to a Haggis' and sang his songs, without knowing it was the first Burns Supper. From 1803 they met on his birthday instead, and the custom spread across Scotland and then the world.
How it's celebrated
At a Burns Supper the haggis is piped in and 'addressed' with Burns's poem before it is cut. There are toasts, the chief one the 'Immortal Memory' of the poet, readings of his poems and songs, and a wee dram. The evening ends with everyone joining hands to sing his 'Auld Lang Syne', the same song much of the world sings at New Year.
Did you know
- The friends planned to meet on his birthday the year after the first supper but got the date wrong, gathering on 29 January.
- The Greenock Ayrshire Society started the tradition of an annual Burns Supper, and by 1815 Sir Walter Scott had organised a grand one in Edinburgh.
- Early Burns Suppers served boiled sheep's head, food that was common at the time.
Coming up next
- Republic Day (India) · January 26, 2027
- International Customs Day · January 26, 2027
- Mozart's Birthday · January 27, 2027
- Data Protection Day · January 28, 2027
- Birth of the Automobile · January 29, 2027
- World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day · January 30, 2027