Boxing Day
There’s a benefit to getting around. You learn things. You can learn about other people and their customs, and some of them are pretty interesting. Take Boxing Day. It’s today. And it’s celebrated in the former British empire. I know about it because of my travels to the far reaches of that old empire. But I’ve never really had a good grasp of why the holiday was celebrated. These days it’s mostly about sports and shopping.
When I looked it up today it said something about it being a day when people gave gifts to trades people and servants. Sounded pretty Victorian to me and upper class. As if trades people weren’t able to afford a decent Christmas on their own, although if I read my Dickens, they probably couldn’t. I mean, take poor Bob Crachit. I think it would be polite to say that he struggled and knowing that Charles was holding a mirror up to English society, I’m guessing it was pervasive, this have and have not world, full of people working hard but being unable to afford anything more than getting by.
Actually, it sounds pretty modern, as I drive around seeing signs for new neighborhoods with houses from 300 to 500 thousand dollars and discover that a truck can cost upwards of $90,000. I’d be willing to bet we’re a society of have and have nots, we just don’t have a Charles Dickens writing about it. I mean, I have a servant. A lady comes and cleans my house every other week. And I had a lawn guy, too. He mowed my yard on my estate in Alvin. We just don’t have a day that acknowledges them. So, rather than brag about all my presents, I think I’ll spend today being grateful and thinking of the less fortunate and try to figure out how I can help them going forward, Boxing Day, old school. If you ask me, that seems pretty much in the Christmas spirit, and I feel a little bit like Ebenezer wanting to buy Bob a goose.