{"id":450151,"date":"2017-12-26T09:19:08","date_gmt":"2017-12-26T09:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ghana-mma.com\/2017\/12\/26\/a-brief-history-of-boxing-day\/"},"modified":"2017-12-26T09:19:08","modified_gmt":"2017-12-26T09:19:08","slug":"a-brief-history-of-boxing-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2017\/12\/26\/a-brief-history-of-boxing-day\/","title":{"rendered":"A brief history of Boxing Day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div id=\"medsection1\">\n<!-- End of html generated by this->header() --><\/p>\n<p class=\"floatLeft\">General News of Tuesday, 26 December 2017<\/p>\n<p class=\"floatRight\"><strong>Source: <\/strong>ghanacrusader.com<\/p>\n<p>2017-12-26<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-left\">\n<p class=\"article-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/19320002.295.jpg\" alt=\"Boxing Day Proper\" title=\"Boxing Day Proper\" width=\"295\" height=\"196\" \/><span class=\"image_caption\"><span>Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated on the day after Christmas Day<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"noPrint\">\n<div id=\"537626303\" style=\"width:300;height:250;margin:0;padding:0\">\n<p>\t\t  <noscript><iframe loading=\"lazy\" id=\"b2ad7fa7fd\" name=\"b2ad7fa7fd\" src=\"http:\/\/ghanaweb-d.openx.net\/w\/1.0\/afr?auid=537626303&amp;cb=151125817929577\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\"><a href=\"\/\/ghanaweb-d.openx.net\/w\/1.0\/rc?cs=b2ad7fa7fd&amp;cb=151125817929577\"><\/p>\n<p>\t\t  <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/ghanamma.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/1514279948_898_ai\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/iframe><\/noscript><\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p style=\"clear:right\"> If you\u2019re looking for something that explains the origins of Boxing Day, well, you\u2019re not going to find it here.<\/p>\n<p>The day-after-Christmas holiday is celebrated by most countries in the Commonwealth but in a what-were-we-doing-again? Bout of amnesia, none of them are really sure what they\u2019re celebrating, when it started or why.<\/p>\n<p>The best clue to Boxing Day\u2019s origins can be found in the song \u201cGood King Wenceslas.\u201d According to the Christmas carol, Wenceslas, who was Duke of Bohemia in the early 10th century, was surveying his land on St. Stephen\u2019s Day \u2014 Dec. 26 \u2014 when he saw a poor man gathering wood in the middle of a snowstorm. Moved, the King gathered up surplus food and wine and carried them through the blizzard to the peasant\u2019s door.<\/p>\n<p>The alms-giving tradition has always been closely associated with the Christmas season \u2014 hence the canned-food drives and Salvation Army Santas that pepper our neighborhoods during the winter \u2014 but King Wenceslas\u2019 good deed came the day after Christmas, when the English poor received most of their charity.<\/p>\n<p>King Wenceslas didn\u2019t start Boxing Day, but the Church of England might have. During Advent, Anglican parishes displayed a box into which churchgoers put their monetary donations.<\/p>\n<p>On the day after Christmas, the boxes were broken open and their contents distributed among the poor, thus giving rise to the term Boxing Day. Maybe.<\/p>\n<p>But wait: there\u2019s another possible story about the holiday\u2019s origin. The day after Christmas was also the traditional day on which the aristocracy distributed presents (boxes) to servants and employees \u2014 a sort of institutionalized Christmas-bonus party.<\/p>\n<p>The servants returned home, opened their boxes and had a second Christmas on what became known as Boxing Day.<\/p>\n<p>So which version is correct? Well, both. Or neither. No one, it seems, is really sure. Both the church boxes and the servant presents definitely existed, although historians disagree on which practice inspired the holiday.<\/p>\n<p>But Boxing Day\u2019s origins aren\u2019t especially important to modern-day Brits \u2014 Britain isn\u2019t known for its religious fervor, and few people can afford to have servants anymore, anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Today\u2019s Boxing Day festivities have very little to do with charity. Instead, they revolve around food, football (soccer), visits from friends, food and drinking at the pub.<\/p>\n<p>Boxing Day has been a national holiday in England, Wales, Ireland and Canada since 1871. For years in which the holiday falls on a weekend, the celebration is moved to make sure workers still get a day off (except in Canada, where it remains Dec. 26), but since visits to Grandma and other family obligations are fulfilled on Christmas, there isn\u2019t anything left to do on Boxing Day except eat leftovers, drink and watch TV.<\/p>\n<p>Just as Americans watch football on Thanksgiving, the Brits have Boxing Day soccer matches and horse races. If they\u2019re particularly wealthy or live in the country, they might even participate in a fox hunt.<\/p>\n<p>The annual Boxing Day fox hunts \u2014 which have been held all over the English countryside for hundreds of years \u2014 were imperiled in 2005 when Parliament banned the traditional method of using dogs to kill the prey.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the dogs\u2019 limited role (they can still chase the animal, but they can\u2019t harm it) hundreds of thousands of people turn out at Boxing Day fox hunts around Britain.<\/p>\n<p>The Irish still refer to the holiday as St. Stephen\u2019s Day, and they have their own tradition called hunting the wren, in which boys fasten a fake wren to a pole and parade it through town.<\/p>\n<p>Also known as Wren Day, the tradition supposedly dates to 1601, to the Battle of Kinsale, in which the Irish tried to sneak up on the English invaders but were betrayed by the song of an overly vocal wren \u2014 although this legend\u2019s veracity is also highly debated. Years ago, a live wren was hunted and killed for the parade, but modern sentiments deemed it too gruesome.<\/p>\n<p>The Bahamas celebrate Boxing Day with a street parade and festival called Junkanoo, in which traditional rhythmic dancers called gombeys fill the streets with their elaborate costumes and headdresses.<\/p>\n<p>And of course, there\u2019s the shopping. England and Canada\u2019s Boxing Day evolved into a major shopping event in the 1980s \u2014 the equivalent of post-Thanksgiving Black Friday. But this year, many of the sales started earlier in an effort to boost the slumping economy.<\/p>\n<p>Boxing Day has evolved from a charitable day to an extended Christmas afternoon. It\u2019s a holiday with presents that have already been opened and a dinner that has been eaten.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s a holiday best spent lounging around in brightly colored sweaters, wondering, lazily and lethargically, what to do next. Come to think of it, it\u2019s a wonder Americans haven\u2019t adopted it yet.<\/p>\n<p><!-- uploaded by: 50 updated by: -1 --><\/p>\n<p><!-- Start of html generated by this->footer() -->\n<\/div>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a style=\"display:none\" rel=\"follow\" href=\"http:\/\/megatheme.ir\/\" title=\"\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0628 \u0648\u0631\u062f\u067e\u0631\u0633\">\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0628 \u0648\u0631\u062f\u067e\u0631\u0633<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>General News of Tuesday, 26 December 2017 Source: ghanacrusader.com 2017-12-26 Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated on the day after Christmas Day If you\u2019re looking for something that explains the origins of Boxing Day, well, you\u2019re not going to find it here. The day-after-Christmas holiday is celebrated by most countries in the Commonwealth but in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":450152,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-450151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-local-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.8 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>A brief history of Boxing Day - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2017\/12\/26\/a-brief-history-of-boxing-day\/\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:title\" content=\"A brief history of Boxing Day - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:description\" content=\"General News of Tuesday, 26 December 2017 Source: ghanacrusader.com 2017-12-26 Boxing Day is a holiday celebrated on the day after Christmas Day If you\u2019re looking for something that explains the origins of Boxing Day, well, you\u2019re not going to find it here. 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