Boxing Day

You know that day after Christmas Day? The day when all of the main celebration is over... when you have leftovers for dinner and the opportunity to appreciate your gifts in more detail?  The day when you have to tidy up all the remnants of leftover wrapping paper from your living room floor? The day when you are itching to print your photographs, get in your craft room and start scrapping?  Do you know that day? .... You may or may not be aware of this, but it has a name: Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is celebrated in many parts of the world, including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, to name a few.  It is a bank and public holiday, meaning we get the day off work to continue with our celebrations.

Boxing Day is thought to have originated from when servants in large country houses received a gift or bonus from their employers for their hard work throughout the year. I have always learned that the term "Boxing" is thought to have come from the boxes that gifts were presented in.  According to my research in writing this article, however, in Roman times metal boxes used to be placed outside churches in order to collect offerings for the feast of Saint Stephen (which also falls on December 26) and so this too could be a reason for the day's name.

In England there are usually two things we do on Boxing Day. The first is shopping! A little similar to the famous American Black Friday sales, Boxing Day sales in England are where you need to be to get a bargain. All Christmas stock is slashed in price and the shops are packed.  I associate the shopping part of the day with flat pack furniture. For some reason I have images from my childhood of being dragged around furniture stores to buy new pieces of furniture such as drawers and tables and then spending the rest of the day watching my parents struggle to put them together while I played with my new toys from Santa!

I do not often go shopping on Boxing Day as the shops are very crowded but instead I might have a little look online.   Since 2009 a lot of online retailers have used the term "Cyber Boxing Day" and sales are said to increase there too.

The second thing that usually happens on Boxing Day is sport. The different soccer leagues all have full schedules of games and they are usually local rival teams so that people do not have to travel too far to get to the match. They are also on the television and so people usually visit friends and family to watch the various "big" games.

In my family both activities are carried out as tradition. We also enjoy a cold meat, hot potato and a variety of pickles for dinner and a few years ago we also started a fun tradition of wearing Christmas Jumpers on Boxing Day, just because we can! 

After all, the festive season is what you make of it. Old traditions mixed with new traditions means a great Christmas!