Merry Christmas To Everyone In Foula In Shetland

Britain’s remotest island celebrates Christmas every 6th of January.

08:41 06 January 2017

Britain’s remotest island, Foula in Shetland, will celebrate Christmas as well as New Year two weeks after the rest of the world as it adheres to an ancient calendar for festivity.

 

Foula, which has only 30 residents including ten children, marks Christmas and New Year according to the feast days of the old Julian calendar. Islanders will gather in one house on Friday where they will exchange greetings and gifts.

 

"Islanders have celebrated these days before the Greorgian Calendar," said crofter Stuart Taylor, 44.

 

"It is not just part of our tradition - but the world's. It is everybody else who changed - not us.

 

"We are not unique - other parts of the world, such as areas of Russia, still celebrate the old calendar.

 

"On the 6th, families open their presents in their own homes and then in the evening we all tend to end up in one house. It is the same at New Year on the 13th - we will visit each others' houses and end up at one.

 

"This tradition is not going to end here. The children have been brought up to expect their main presents on the 6th."

 

Foula only got running water in 1982 and full electricity by 1984.