December 26, 2006
Boxing
I don’t remember ever hearing of Boxing Day until a few years ago from one of my more erudite associates, who is something of an Anglophiliac, as it has some British connection which I’ll explain shortly. He’s a good friend and keeps me abreast of things like this, patiently.
In most places that bother with the appropriate calendars, today is also the Feast of Stephen upon which Good King Wenceslas looked down, whether from a superior perspective or merely in disdain, I’ve never been quite sure. Stephen, later named a saint by any measure, was the first Christian martyr and also a deacon, an order with an already built-in martyrdom complex. I take it there were neither Boxing Days nor Feasts of Stephen at the time. Nor, for that matter, my parents’ anniversary which is also December 26. Not being keepers of any liturgical cycle that I know of, they may well have never heard either of St Stephen’s or Boxing days, an absence of venue that could, perhaps, help explain that gap in my history.
Boxing Day, according to my abridged dictionary, is “the first weekday after Christmas observed as a legal holiday in parts of the British Commonwealth (sic) and marked by the giving of Christmas boxes to service workers, such as postmen.” It doesn’t mention whether the boxes were presents in themselves to be treasured or whether they also contained sugar plums and the like. (I had a senior warden once, a lawyer, who handed out silver dollars to cops on the beat in his town during Christmastime, but never spoke of the practice as having anything to do with Boxing Day, only with his maintaining peace and good will with those who enforce the law.)
It is a great and wondrous season that somehow in spite of ourselves we continue to maintain. If only we could each year extend it a bit longer. For now maybe for the twelve days we sing about?