"Happy Boxing Day!" say all the people who like English things. It's a special post-Christmas holiday when you put on heavy leather gloves and pretend to fight with your relatives, getting out all the frustrations and aggravations accumulated over the previous few days.
For example: Aunt Edna sat at the end of the table and made political remarks about everything. She's a flaming moderate. Gets mad if you pass her anything from the left or the right. I'M AN INDEPENDENT, she barked. PASS THE GRAVY FROM THE MIDDLE. So, Boxing Day! Lace up and head on over to her house and lay one right across the chops.
Well, no. That's not the origin of the term at all. No one really knows where the name comes from, according to the Wikipedia column googled by the laziest columnist in the world, but the tradition involves giving things to tradespeople on the day after Christmas. Just to let them know they don't deserve anything timely. It's like giving the person at the dry-cleaning counter a sparkler on July 5th.
I've no idea why this hasn't caught on in America. Of course, there are many English traditions we strenuously avoid; we don't have groat-in-the-hole and baked brambles and sheep's eyes on St. Shingles' Day, or whatever they do. But Boxing Day involves buying things to give to other people, which means buying something else to give to yourself, as well. A nice cologne-and-soap set for the mailman — hope he likes Brut! — annnnnd a 47-inch TV for me.
Retail, after all, is always looking for sale opportunities. We accept the absurdity of a Presidents' Day Sale, as if there is a natural connection between the nation's chief executive and a picture of George Washington with an ax saying, "I cannot tell a lie: Mattress prices have never been lower!" A tire store will advertise ARBOR DAY MADNESS and we nod, as if store managers are gripped by irresistible delusions when the calendar suggests it is time to have vague thoughts about trees. I think that I shall never see / three tires bought, but the fourth one free — except today! Exclusions apply.
I got a catalog a few days before Christmas advertising the END OF THE YEAR CLEARANCE. Basically: All that stuff you didn't buy in the last catalog because you couldn't imagine why you would want a wine-bottle stopper in the shape of one of the Three Stooges' heads, well, it's cheaper now. This was one of those catalogs that specialize in aggressive slogans for middle-aged people comfortable with their insufferable nature. You know what I mean: "This pithy quote somehow justifies my unsociable nature and/or my reliance on wine to get through life." Also boxed sets of DVDs of a TV show where Dick Van Dyke solved crimes.
OUR LAST SALE OF THE YEAR, said the catalog, which apparently was supposed to make me clutch my sternum and scrabble for the Visa card, because come the turn of the calendar page they'd hike up prices like jocks in the locker room giving a nerd a stern wedgie.
Which brings me back to Boxing Day. Stores don't seem comfortable with New Year's Eve sales. They seem to assume that everyone is just exhausted by Dec. 31, and no one wants to schlep to the mall and paw over ties and sweaters on New Year's Eve. No one grabs the car keys and shouts "there's a good chance those motorized tie racks are half-off. Wish me luck!" What's in the stores today? Items roundly rejected by everyone. The stores would make more money if they charged $10 admission on New Year's Eve and burned everything they couldn't sell.
