underground services are also unavailable from about 21:00 hours. Individual transport companies start making announcements as early as October, and while one train operating company may choose to run no trains on Boxing Day another may run a limited Saturday service but totally close major stations. In England, telling ghost stories, local legends, and other strange, bizarre, and fantastic "winter stories" (as Charles Dickens – author of A Christmas Carol – termed them) is a centuries-old tradition, to which William Shakespeare contributed with The Winter's Tale (1623) but which was well known even before Shakespeare's time. (In contrast, Ireland, Scotland, and the USA favor Halloween as a time for telling ghostly tales.) Colin Fleming details other contributors to this tradition in the Paris Review. Wales Wales has a tradition of singing caneuon plygain, which is done on the week before Christmas day. Scotland Christmas in Scotland was traditionally observed very quietly, because the Church of Scotland never placed much emphasis on the Christmas festival. However, in Catholic areas people would attend Midnight Mass or early morning mass before going to work. This tradition derives from the Church of Scotland's origins including St Columba's monastic tradition, under which every day is God's day and there is none more special than another; thus Good Friday is not an official public holiday in Scotland. Christmas Day was commonly a normal working day in Scotland until the 1960s, and even into the 1970s in some areas. The New Year's Eve festivity, Hogmanay, was by far the largest celebration in Scotland. The gift-giving, public holidays and feasting associated with mid-winter were traditionally held between December 11 and January 6. However, since the 1980s, the fading of the Church's influence and the increased influences from the rest of the UK and elsewhere, Christmas and its related festivities are now nearly on a par with Hogmanay and Ne'erday, New Year's Day. The capital city of Edinburgh now has a traditional German Christmas market from late November until Christmas Eve and on the first Sunday in Advent a Nativity scene is blessed by the Cardinal Archbishop in the main square. Bannock cakes made of oatmeal are traditionally eaten at Christmas. Ireland Christmas in Ireland is the largest celebration of the Irish public holidays and lasts from December 24 to January 6, although many view December 8 as being the start of the season, as schools used to close