Fradam

A chance question the other day made me wonder where Boxing Day came from. The notion of a public holiday for boxing (as old and respected a sport it is), did not… quite… seem right (although as mentioned, a public holiday for the sake of eating is not unheard of). So I endeavoured to research it a little and find the root cause. Someone tried to convince me that in drinking cultures, the amount of contact one had with in-laws on Christmas day often led to a high amount of tension that needed a means of release. A day off could either be used to partake, or to recover if participants were eager beavers and had got into a tension-relieving jousting match on Christmas day itself. Another explanation I heard was that the generosity of Santa was causing too many accidents in homes with young children due to an excess of wrapping paper and boxes left lying around in the middle of hallways, and that a practical solution was to have a day off so that the whole family could rid themselves of the plague of excess boxes once and for all. A less cheery cause could be the notion that people in general have poor present selection, and enough people spent the day after Christmas returning their boxes to the stores whence they came, in search of something better in tune with themselves. A final theory was the rumour that some people like to wear boxes on their head, and this fine appreciation of cardboarded headware led to a public holiday being declared in honour of it in the Commonwealth.

I have since confirmed that every one of these theories is false.

In particular the last one, since that was my theory.

Having said that, the part about it relating to the Commonwealth is correct. Boxing Day is celebrated in majority-Christian Commonwealth nations (e.g. Australia!), and is generally based upon the idea of giving gifts to members of society less fortunate; i.e. it was a tool of the class entrenchment of those times. Allegedly, if Christmas was for giving gifts to ’social equals’, than those below would be bestowed upon with gifts the day after. Of course, no gifts could be returned in the opposing direction, as that would subtly imply that those below were on par with those above, and such ideas would have been considered quite terrible.

Beyond that, there were quite a few different folk roots - for example, this has immediate hints of Saturnalia, a Roman festival which was renowned for role reversal. It’s not clear really which one could have basis in fact though, so I suppose it could be considered immaterial.

So there you have it: the origins of Boxing day, in a box. I like the gift giving aspect of it (more public holidays to give people gifts is an awesome idea), but dislike the enforcement of the class distinctions that existed in those societies. Equality is important.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…”