By Kathy Hughes
Contributing Writer
This year, since Christmas falls on a Sunday, Monday was a legal holiday for most American workers. However, for much of the English speaking world, the day after Christmas is always an official holiday known as Boxing Day.
Boxing Day has nothing to do with prize fighting, but with actual boxes, cardboard or otherwise, which are used to present gifts to those who provide services to the community. These include mail carriers, newspaper deliverers, hair dressers and barbers, which today has been expanded to include donations to charities and religious organizations.
For those who were wealthy, back as far as the Middle Ages, Boxing Day is the day on which ‘gifts’ were actually owed to servants whose services had been required to provide their employers celebration on Christmas Day. Food, clothing, money and other items, including some leftovers from the Christmas feast, were boxed up to be collected by servants on the day after Christmas.
The modern words to “Good King Wenceslas,” an old Christmas carol, reveal the spirit and expectations on Boxing Day (which coincides with St. Stephen’s Day, “the Feast of Stephen”), “bring us flesh [meat] and bring us wine, bring us pine logs thither, ” is sung not as requests by the carolers, but as demands by servants getting their due.
In modern times, Boxing Day still has a charitable aspect to it, and employers give workers and service providers their Christmas tip or bonus. However, the day is now generally enjoyed by all by consuming leftover dishes, such as turkey or meat pies, and other specialties of the Day. Even more so, while banks and government offices are closed, Boxing Day has become a day for merchants to sponsor after Christmas sales and to accept returns and exchanges for Christmas gifts. The irony is, once again, workers are needed for the sales, requiring workers to give up their holiday.
Efforts to bring Boxing Day to the United States have had only limited success, except for the after Christmas sales. Furthermore, Black Friday has become more or less institutionalized as a day for merchants to get rid of inventory and bring the balance books into black. Also, the Christmas “bonus” or tip to the newspaper deliverer are expected by many recipients making them less than voluntary, though not on the day after Christmas.
It can be said that many Britons and other observers look forward to Boxing Day, as a day to kick back and watch football (soccer), horse races and generally recover from the excesses and frenzy of the days preceding — some have even proposed a “Boxing Week.”
