Thursday, December 27

Boxing Day

I first heard of the celebration of Boxing Day - December 26 - when I celebrated my first Christmas in Sydney in 2005. I later learned that Boxing Day is celebrated by most of the Commonwealth countries, Australia being one of them. This day which is also celebrated as St. Stephen's Day or the "Second Christmas" is supposed to be the day when the neighborhood's year-long workers such as the paper boy and the postman carry their "boxes" and go from house to house getting their Christmas gifts from everyone they served throughout the year. This reminds me of a similar scenario in the Philippines when garbage men and your all-around repair guy give you empty envelopes in which you put a little cash that serves as their Christmas "bonus" for all the works that they've done for you throughout the year. The difference is, in the Philippines these people tend to give you their envelopes much earlier than December 26; sort of getting the perennial "vale" instead of the Christmas bonus.

Anyways, the Boxing Day and all the other days before the new year which are called "days between years" in some European countries like Germany, are also the time when big stores and malls are supposed to empty their current inventories and thus give more discounts and bargains to shoppers. I remember Alice had a particular liking to the celebration of Boxing Day in Australia because of this, when one is supposed to really find good bargains from malls and department stores. I think this is also somewhat being practiced in the Philippines, with discounts and other bargains continuing until the new year.

Unfortunately, Boxing Day is not celebrated in this region, and thus, Alice is dismayed. This means no big discounts, no very good bargains, nothing of the sort from this day on until new year. Well, what can we expect, when Christmas is considered a secondary occasion, it just follows logically that Boxing Day won't also be celebrated.

Anyways (again), here are other Boxing Day origins: (from Answers.com)
  • 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.