Claim: The name of Boxing Day comes from the
need to rid the house of empty boxes the day after Christmas.
Status: False.
Origins: Few Americans have any inkling that there
even is such a thing as Boxing Day, let alone what the reason might
be for a holiday so named. However, before one concludes we're
about to rag on Americentric attitudes towards other cultures, we
should quickly point out that even though Boxing Day is celebrated
in Australia, Britain, New Zealand, and Canada, not all that many
in those countries have much of a notion as to why they get the
26th of December off. Boxing Day might well be a statutory holiday
in some of those lands, but it's not a well understood one.
Despite the lively images suggested by the name, it has nothing to
do with pugilistic expositions between tanked-up family members who
have dearly been looking forward to taking a round out of each
other for the past year. Likewise, it does not gain its name from
the overpowering need to rid the house of an excess of wrappings
and mountains of now useless cardboard boxes the day after St. Nick
arrived to turn a perfectly charming and orderly home into a
maelstrom of discarded tissue paper.
The name also has nothing to do with returning unwanted gifts to
the stores they came from, hence its common association with
hauling about boxes on the day after Christmas.
The holiday's roots can be traced to Britain, where Boxing Day is
also known as St. Stephen's Day. Reduced to the simplest essence,
its origins are found in a long-ago practice of giving cash or
durable goods to those of the lower classes. Gifts among equals
were exchanged on or before Christmas Day, but beneficences to
those less fortunate were bestowed the day after.
And that's about as much as anyone can definitively say about its
origin because once you step beyond that point, it's straight into
the quagmire of debated claims and dueling folklorists. Which, by
the way, is what we're about to muddy our boots with.
Although there is general agreement that the holiday is of British
origin and it has to do with giving presents to the less fortunate,
there is still dispute as to how the name came about or precisely
what unequal relationship is being recognized.
At various times, the following "origins" have been loudly asserted
as the correct one:
Centuries ago, ordinary members of the merchant
class gave boxes of food and fruit to tradespeople and servants the
day after Christmas in an ancient form of Yuletide tip. These gifts
were an expression of gratitude to those who worked for them, in
much the same way that one now tips the paperboy an extra $20 at
Christmastime or slips the building's superintendent a bottle of
fine whisky. Those long-ago gifts were done up in boxes, hence the
day coming to be known as "Boxing Day."
Christmas celebrations in the old days entailed
bringing everyone together from all over a large estate, thus
creating one of the rare instances when everyone could be found in
one place at one time. This gathering of his extended family, so to
speak, presented the lord of the manor with a ready-made
opportunity to easily hand out that year's stipend of necessities.
Thus, the day after Christmas, after all the partying was over and
it was almost time to go back to far-flung homesteads, serfs were
presented with their annual allotment of practical goods. Who got
what was determined by the status of the worker and his relative
family size, with spun cloth, leather goods, durable food supplies,
tools, and whatnot being handed out. Under this explanation, there
was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor
was obligated to supply these goods. The items were chucked into
boxes, one box for each family, to make carrying away the results
of this annual restocking easier; thus, the day came to be known as
"Boxing Day."
Many years ago, on the day after Christmas,
servants in Britain carried boxes to their masters when they
arrived for the day's work. It was a tradition that on this day all
employers would put coins in the boxes as a special end-of-the-year
gift. In a closely-related version of this explanation, apprentices
and servants would on that day get to smash open small earthenware
boxes left for them by their masters. These boxes would house small
sums of money specifically left for them.
This dual-versioned theory melds the two previous ones together
into a new form namely, the employer who was obligated to hand
out something on Boxing Day, but this time to recipients who were
not working the land for him and thus were not dependent on him for
all they wore and ate. The "box" thus becomes something beyond
ordinary compensation (in a way goods to landed serfs was not), yet
it's also not a gift in that there's nothing voluntary about it.
Under this theory, the boxes are an early form of Christmas bonus,
something employees see as their entitlement.
Boxes in churches for seasonal donations to the
needy were opened on Christmas Day, and the contents distributed by
the clergy the following day. The contents of this alms box
originated with the ordinary folks in the parish who were under no
direct obligation to provide anything at all and were certainly not
tied to the recipients by a employer/employee relationship. In this
case, the "box" in "Boxing Day" comes from that one gigantic
lockbox the donations were left in.
More elaborate versions of this origin involve boxes kept on
sailing ships:
The title has been derived by some, from the box which was kept on
board of every vessel that sailed upon a distant voyage, for the
reception of donations to the priest who, in return, was expected
to offer masses for the safety of the expedition, to the particular
saint having charge of the ship and above all, of the box. The
box was not to be opened until the return of the vessel; and we can
conceive that, in cases where the mariners had had a perilous time
of it, this casket would be found to enclose a tolerable offering.
The mass was at that time called Christmass, and the boxes kept to
pay for it were, of course, called Christmass-boxes. The poor,
amongst those who had an interest in the fate of these ships, or of
those who sailed in them, were in the habit of begging money from
the rich, that they might contribute to the mass boxes; and hence
the title which has descended to our day, giving to the anniversary
of St Stephen's martyrdom the title of Christmas-boxing day, and,
by corruption, its present popular one of Boxing Day.
Whichever theory one chooses to back, the one thread common to all
is the theme of one-way provision to those not inhabiting the same
social level. As mentioned previously, equals exchanged gifts on
Christmas Day or before, but lessers (be they tradespeople,
employees, servants, serfs, or the generic "poor") received their
"boxes" on the day after. It is to be noted that the social
superiors did not receive anything back from those they played Lord
Bountiful to: a gift in return would have been seen as a
presumptuous act of laying claim to equality, the very thing Boxing
Day was an entrenched bastion against. Boxing Day was, after all,
about preserving class lines.
Barbara "lines of the times" Mikkelson
Sightings: In the familiar Christmas carol, Good
King Wenceslas' gifts of flesh (meat), wine, and firewood were made
to a poor man whom he observed struggling through the snow "on the
Feast of Stephen."
