First thing you need to understand about Boxing Day is that it doesn’t really involve fisticuffs or the Marquis of Queensbury rules.
Oh, there have certainly been occasional matches held on December 26th, but Boxing Day is about a different kind of boxing. Since the early 19th Century, it has been traditional that the day after Christmas is a day when people of means pack up (box up) gifts and give them to servants and service-people. It originated in England and is mostly celebrated in British Commonwealth countries.
It officially became a bank holiday in 1871, and it is celebrated on December 26th unless that date falls on a Sunday. The it moves to Monday and creates a long weekend.
You could say it’s a reminder of Christmas past, the all too forgotten idea that it is better to give than to receive.
Actually, perhaps proving that American commercialism eventually infests everything, Boxing Day has changed over the years and now is celebrated more as a day of massive shopping.
Black Friday II?
People used to believe the day after Christmas was the busiest shopping day of the year. Exchanges, refunds and bargains, you know. It still is in Canada, but in this country it has fallen behind Black Friday and the Saturday before Christmas..
If there was one thing that didn’t surprise me a bit, it’s that even in the year of the pandemic, habits didn’t change much. I was at our local Walmart twice in the week before Christmas, and on both occasions there were no shopping carts available when I arrived. People were doing only a mediocre job of social distancing, but at least everyone was finally wearing a mask.
Are we at the point where we haven’t reached the end of the pandemic but we can see it from here?
I doubt it.
Where we can imagine it from here?
Maybe if we have a really good imagination.
What still frightens me about it is that every estimate we have received from time to time about how many deaths there will be in the U.S. by a certain date, when the date arrives, we have exceeded it.
The next prediction I can recall was that there would be 400,000 Americans dead by February 1st.
Well, we topped 330,000 today, and since the spread of the virus from Christmas travel hasn’t even come yet, my hunch is 400,000 will be too low.
So enjoy your Boxing Day. I hope you had a good Christmas and I wish you a safe new year. We’ll turn the corner in 2021, maybe as soon as January 21st.
Hope is the thing with feathers.