boxing day and traditions

...from giving to receiving.

Traditionally Boxing Day was the day when the lower classes and the poor, and later the workers and servants, came to the wealthy higher classes and their employers to receive their boxes of seasonal goods: benevolence, or rewards for a year's work well done.

When I was a child, without the benefit of Google and Wikipedia, I fondly imagined that Boxing Day was when Christmas excesses and trimmings were packaged up and stored away in the attics I read about in story books. Maybe that is why it is my preference to remove all sign of Christmas decorations as soon as possible after Christmas Day.

Now it seems that Boxing Day is one of the best trading days for store keepers, and the best bargain day for shoppers. Somehow I think that is a less benevolent twist to giving and receiving.

Google tells me that St Stephen's Day and Boxing Day were once intertwined. In fact, I do remember that Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen. So where does the Duke of Bohemia, Wenceslas, fit in? Now his is an interesting tale. Wikipedia again... do read on! Feasts take on yet another meaning! How would you like to be named Strachvas, "a dreadful feast"?

Hoping for a more peaceful story, I googled St Stephen. You guessed it, yet another martyr! This time one stoned to death rather than murdered at a feast.

By now my Boxing Day morning, reflecting on the greed and brutality of man, was becoming rather grim. Best to return to the present, listen to the neighbour's rooster signalling 7am, and take refuge in breakfast, panettone and all - no, I just can't do it. Cereal and fruit it has to be. Panforte from Siena could be my downfall at Christmas, but the huge range of beautifully boxed Panettone, in every combination of fruit, lemon or chocolate imaginable, can continue on its way on the gift merry-go-round. It is too sweet and insubstantial for me.

Today I am grateful for health-giving food.