The occasion was Heritage Day at the school where I work - special assemblies, native dress, and truckloads of food from around the world prepared by the parents. (I hit the middle Eastern table pretty hard.)
A little informal research on the interwebs disproves almost everything I thought I knew about the tartan. For example, they aren't as ancient as I thought. There was no uniformity (pardon the pun) in pattern until the late 17th or early 18th century, and at that time the pattern was used to identify a region, not a clan. In 1822 highland chiefs were asked to wear their tartans to the festivities celebrating King George IV's visit to Edinburgh. Tartan popularity took off from there, leading to a book which featured clan tartans, the Vestiarium Scoticum, published in 1842.
There is an etiquette to wearing tartan - very confusing, but I'll boil it down for you: Since clan membership passes through the surname, Scots wear the tartan of the father only. If your family does not have a tartan there are several patterns which anyone can wear called universal or free tartans. The Balmoral pattern is reserved for the British Royal Family only. Of course, these are conventions or guidelines only. Technically there is nothing preventing one from wearing the Balmoral pattern except the disapproval of haughty "authorities." It's not nearly as criminal as wearing white after Labor Day.
Scottish Clan and Family Names: Their Arms, Origins and Tartans
by Roderick Martine
Scottish Census
Various censuses for 1851 and 1881
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