Boxing Day is a public holiday celebrated in the United Kingdom and most other Commonwealth countries on December 26, the day after Christmas Day. I don’t know why it’s called Boxing Day, just like I don’t know why Easter is about rabbits and eggs, but I know that on Boxing Day nobody works. It’s big in Australia I know, which is where I first heard about it, so I asked my aussie friend, “What’s Boxing Day?”
“It’s the day after Christmas, what do you mean?” she says. Understandably it’s a holiday with no real meaning anymore, but it does mean that nobody works on the day after Christmas.
I did a little Wikapedia research:
There are disparate theories as to the origins of the term “Boxing Day.” The more common stories include:
* It was the day when people would give a present or Christmas 'box' to those who have worked for them throughout the year. This is still done in Britain for postmen and paper-boys - though now the 'box' is usually given before Christmas, not after.
* In feudal times, Christmas was a reason for a gathering of extended families. All the serfs would gather their families in the manor of their lord, which made it easier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christmas parties on 26 December, the lord of the estate would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would get a box full of such goods the day after Christmas. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obliged to supply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Boxing Day.
* In England many years ago, it was common practice for the servants to carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day's work on the day after Christmas. Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts. This can be compared with the modern day concept of Christmas bonuses. The servants carried boxes for the coins, hence the name Boxing Day.
* In churches, it was traditional to open the church's donation box on Christmas Day, and the money in the donation box was to be distributed to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day. In this case, the "box" in "Boxing Day" comes from that lockbox in which the donations were left.
* Boxing Day was the day when the wren, the king of birds,[3] was captured and put in a box and introduced to each household in the village when he would be asked for a successful year and a good harvest. See Frazer's Golden Bough.
o Evidence can also be found in Wassail songs such as:
Where are you going ? said Milder to Malder,
Oh where are you going ? said Fessel to Foe,
I'm going to hunt the cutty wren said Milder to Malder,
I'm going to hunt the cutty wren said John the Rednose.
And what will you do wi' it ? said Milder to Malder,
And what will you do wi' it ? said Fessel to Foe,
I'll put it in a box said Milder to Malder,
I'll put it in a box said John the Rednose.
etc...
* Because the staff had to work on such an important day as Christmas Day by serving the master of the house and their family, they were given the following day off. Since being kept away from their own families to work on a traditional religious holiday and not being able to celebrate Christmas Dinner, the customary benefit was to "box" up the leftover food from Christmas Day and send it away with the servants and their families. Hence the "boxing" of food became "Boxing Day".
Well last night a few of my friends didn’t want to have a late night because they had to go to work in the morning, and that’s when it hit me. Wham! We should really pick up on this Boxing Day deal here in the states. It’s sounds like a great holiday for everyone. Not only is it on the Two Six, it’s the Two Six after Christmas every year, the last Two Six of the year. Once you get a holiday rolling, they never seem to stop, so all we’ve got to do is roll a snowball down the mountain so to speak. I mean, who can imagine there ever not being a Halloween on October 31st every year? You can’t stop that wheel, because the markets have hijacked the mechanisms and turned our celebrations into a formula. For our sake, we should really try and get Boxing Day going here in the States. Instead of fighting the formula, we’ll work with it. It’s already going strong in the outback, we just need to find a way to use that momentum that’s already going over there to stream it into the states some how.
All we need are T-shirts, celebrity spokes persons, “traditional activities,” a good story to tell the kids, and a bunch of songs, you know? Like Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny and Jesus coming back to life, it doesn’t really have to make sense. Give it a few years, let Hallmark and Wal-mart do their thing, and soon enough Boxing Day will make the economy enough money on the cards and decorations and Boxing Day Albums it sells, that it can afford to take the day off every year anyway. Do you see the vision of this investment strategy here? Do you see where I’m going with this? You don’t fight the flow, you surrender to the flow and shape the banks. This might just be a viable a loop hole here. The Holiday Phenomenon Theory. Yeah yeah, that’s what I’ll do. I can see it now, don’t you see it? Can’t you see it in lights in Macy's? Boxing Day. You can hear it whispering in the winds of the people’s minds already. Do you hear it? Boxing Day.
You know what we can do on Boxing Day? Carve watermelons. How’s about that for a good spin off? Brilliant…
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