This week: Boxing Day! Edited by: Ẃeβ࿚ẂỉԎḈĥ More Newsletters By This Editor
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Why can't USA, have an official Boxing Day, holiday? Do we not have sufficient boxes in our country? Is there a couple guys or gals in a ring wearing boxing gloves? I believe we can come up with all of those requirements, so we too can have the day after Christmas as an additional holiday. |
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Hello folks! I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and are still feeling the joy of it all.
I've kind of heard of it, didn't pay much attention to it. However, since this Newsletter is due to arrive smack down upon this holiday, I had to know more about it.
This newsletter will of course reach you on the most anticlimactic day of the year in America, December 26! Now, somebody over in England felt it appropriate to postpone the end of Christmastime holidays by declaring an additional holiday called Boxing Day. I have to admit, when I first heard about this, I thought it was some celebration of boxing, the sport between a couple of fighters in a ring. I guess having a sporting type of holiday is as good as anything else Hallmark could come up with to sell greeting cards, right after selling the usual holiday greeting cards. I also thought my first interpretation of Boxing Day seemed a bit odd, so pondered some more about it and decided it was the day all those empty boxes left under the tree, get collected in one huge community recycling gathering. “Get your boxes out to the curb before noon!”
Well, it appears that my curiosity got the best of me after watching a Hallmark Channel story during the countdown to Christmas, days. “ “Fallen Angel.”
It was a story about an American couple, one from New York, planning to spend Christmas in her Maine home, and the other an L.A. transplant from Maine, who returned home when his father died. Needless to say, they had a “history” when they were children. It was the above average holiday story and included the heart-tugging moments. However, my ears perked up when I heard Gary Sinise’s character mention that it would take until “Boxing Day” to get something done.
Wait a minute, we don’t celebrate Boxing Day, here in the States. It later dawned on me that many Hallmark stories are made in Canada, and as a country formerly under the crown of Great Britain, they do celebrate Boxing Day. You should have known that, Hallmark story creators. Yes, you should have known we Americans would be wondering what the heck Gary Sinise was talking about in that part. That was the final straw. I decided to look up this whole Boxing Day thing.
It appears, Boxing Day started in UK about 800 years ago, during the Middle Ages. It was created as a way to collect “alms” for the poor. The boxes were often kept in churches so that the contents could be distributed to the poor. The boxes were traditionally opened on December 26. There is of course another interpretation of the day, supposedly that the Romans brought it to the UK, but used them to collect money for betting games played during the winter. I think I prefer the charitable reason for the celebration, since it is St. Stephen’s Day, whichever St. Stephen version you want to believe. Yes, there were two of them.
Here in America? We also have a “give-back" day, mostly known as “return day." December 26, is an ordinary work day for most, unless it falls upon a weekend. People who work on the 26th, I believe, feel the Christmas excitement let-down, deeply. They are just plain miserable about having to get up early, pack a lunch, and trudge off to work, as if a wondrous, magical holiday couldn’t have possibly existed merely one day before. And while they are working, those who are on a planned vacation or break from school, and those who are retired or do not work outside the home, are in the face of those who do work, especially those poor folks working in retail, trying to return their unwanted gifts received for Christmas.
Hmmm, I think I like Great Britain’s as well as a few other countries way of celebrating December 26. It’s the gift that keeps on giving the day after receiving. Jolly good, if you ask me!
Hap-hap-happy Boxing Day, folks!
And, Happy New Year to all!
Until next time -- laugh hard, laugh often!
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See you next year, folks!!!
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