Ask
an American of a certain age about Boxing Day and he will tell you about
the gym class when they made you lace up the gloves back in the day when it was
considered both good healthy exercise and a character builder—“don’t be a
pansy, it’s only a split lip!”—to let children whale the daylights out of each
other. Since those days have long past,
younger Yanks probably thinks it’s just the day before the moving van arrives.
But
in Britain and the scattered
remnants of her former Empire Boxing
Day is a treasured tradition and a legal holiday. It traditionally falls on the day after Christmas, December 26. Since becoming an official holiday if it
falls on the weekend, the official observance is pushed over into the next
week.
The
celebration had its roots with the aristocracy,
gentry, and wealthy townsmen and
their households. The master would give presents to his
servants and staff, who would also have the day off work. Sometimes the master’s family would even
serve meals to their inferiors! Needless
to say, this custom was very popular among the servants, and sometimes observed
resentfully by those unaccustomed to either manual labor or generosity.
The
day is a remnant of an ancient tradition that may—or may not—go back to the Roman celebration of Saturnalia, when there was a carnival like “turn around” with slaves
lording over masters for a day. The
tradition continued into the Middle Ages
on into Elizabethan times, where it
took on the wild excesses of street revelry.
That
revelry doomed the whole season when Oliver
Cromwell and his Puritans took
over. Eventually, Boxing Day restored a
controlled dollop of the old festival.
The Church of England gave a
religious cover to the day as St. Stephen’s
Day. Stephen was the Deacon of Jerusalem the earliest days of Christianity
known for his charities to the poor. He
was also the first Christian martyr,
stoned to death for allegedly preaching the Trinity in the Temple.
The
familiar carol Good King Wenceslas is a St. Stephen’s Day song meant for street
begging. In Ireland, the day is still
officially called St. Stephen’s Day.
It is also known there as Wren’s Day boys in homemade
hats and costumes carry a caged wren—or sometime a dead one pierced by a holly
sprig—proclaiming it the king of the birds and begging for
treats. Once a fading country custom, in
the cities men now re-enact it—often on a pub crawl.
In the Bank Holidays
Act of 1871,
Parliament recognized Boxing Day as
a Bank Holiday—an officially
recognized public holiday. While time
off from work was not originally mandatory, but has become nearly universal.
The
holiday spread across the Empire and is still official in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth countries. In South Africa it was re-named The Day of Goodwill in 1994.
Today
small gifts are still given trades people and service workers, but in Britain
the day has become all about shopping.
It is the biggest shopping day of the year and has been compared to
American Black Friday, the day after
Thanksgiving. Stores mark the day with huge sales.
It
is also a day of sport. Football—that’s soccer Americans—and Rugby leagues hold full schedules of,
teams usually playing their most serious rivals. There are also prestige horse races and the
country gentry mount fox hunts.
The toffs are no longer allowed to chase real fox, but still get to
ride to the hounds chasing a scented bait.
So
for my friends across the pond and around the world who celebrate, happy Boxing
Day!
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