DEBORAH CROMBIE: So how is everyone doing today? Are we recovering from the festivities? It was so lovely reading everyone's Christmas good wishes here yesterday.
And today, December 26th, we get to take a breath after the Christmas rush. It is the Feast of Saint Stephen, and in the UK (and its former territories) it's also known as Boxing Day. (Although if the 25th falls on a Sunday, Tuesday the 27th used to be celebrated as Boxing Day, because the Monday after Christmas was already designated a Bank Holiday. But that has now changed and the 26th is Boxing Day regardless. Confused yet?)
There is some argument about the origin of the name, but the most common theory is that it refers to the alms boxes in Christian churches, the contents of which were distributed to the poor on the day after Christmas.
It first shows up in the Oxford English Dictionary in the 1830s, defined as "the first weekday after Christmas day, observed as a holiday on which postmen, errand boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas box," but Samuel Pepys refers to the custom in his diary as early as 1663. Some scholars date the custom as far back as Roman Britain.
And of course if you're in the British countryside, the Boxing Day Hunt is a long held tradition.
(In case you're worried about the foxes, fox hunting is now illegal in England, Scotland, and Wales. The hunts follow scent trails.)
Of course Boxing Day has now become a big shopping holiday in the UK, compared to Black Friday in the U.S., which sort of undoes my fantasies of a Boxing Day spent sipping tea and eating cake in a perfect English village.
And since we Americans don't celebrate Boxing Day, I'm going to invent my own December 26th holiday and call it BOOKING DAY--a day in which one is at liberty to recline on the sofa and read the books you've gotten for Christmas!
Any good Christmas book hauls, REDs and readers, that you're curling up with today?
