Let Me Digress

Posted By kahmelb on December 26, 2009

Ho, ho, berloody ho.

Well, it’s December 26.  And you know what that means, don’t you.  Yes, that’s right, it’s time to say…

Happy Boxing Day everyone!

Yes, once again we reach that time of year when we all try to recover from too much eating, too much drinking and too little success in avoiding old Uncle “Groper” Jim at the family Christmas Party.  This also means it is time for me to send you my traditional Boxing Day indigestible greetings and alcoholic wishes.

As this is such a reflective, spiritual, peace-love-and-mungbeans-baby time of year, obviously the first thing to do when meeting and greeting one another the day after Christmas is to compare gifts.  So, did you all get good pressies yesterday, or just the same old crap from maiden aunts’ who misspell your name even after three decades of giving you the same pair of socks every bloody year?

(I’m a little pissed off, actually.  According to my meticulously kept wall chart, I have in fact been nice on exactly 2.3 more occasions this year than I have been nasty, so Santa’s totally ripped me off, the fat old bastard.)

Anyway.  Boxing Day.  We all know about Christmas, that whole pagan festival to Coca-Cola merchandising thing (apparently there’s even some kind of religious significance, so I’m told.  Go figure.)  Very little is known, however, about Boxing Day itself.  So in the interests of being a know-it-all-sod, I’ve compiled a few simple facts:

One: it’s a British-Commonwealthy type of thing, so therefore all of you in the rest of the world, like America and tiny places such as that, will have absolutely no clue what I’m talking about.

Two: besides being well loved and rigorously defended as a natural born right, that is, it’s an extra public holiday, nobody in the British-Commonwelathy type countries seems to know what it’s all about either.

Three: it’s actually derived from the tradition of giving the, *ahem*, “lower classes” gifts (read: charity) the day after Christmas.

Hey, I’m serious here.  I’ve done some real research, and all.  (Okay, so maybe I just checked out Snopes and their Boxing Day research, but it’s more than you did, I bet.  And always remember – this is the internet.  When you can’t be bothered doing something yourself, there’ll always be someone else who’s done it for you.)

Presents to equals were always given on or before Christmas and the poor got the left-overs the day later.  I can see the logic, of course.  Imagine you’re a feudal lord.  You’ve just received a truck load (well, a medieval horse-drawn cart load) of unwanted socks from some aunt who’s always spelt your name wrong and now you don’t know what to do with them.  At the same time, the peasants on your land have been getting a bit tetchy lately and tend to glower darkly at you whenever you run over one of their children whilst driving past in your carriage on your way to have sex with the local virgin, as befits your lordly feudal rights.  For some reason, they seem to have been spending a lot of time sharpening those sickles and pitchforks recently, and it’s not even harvest season yet.  Hmmm…

So what do you do?  The solution should be obvious.  You can take the opportunity to appear the philanthropic and generous lordship, plus solving your sock-overload problems all at the same time.  Perfect.

Of course, you may still have to knock off the heads of a few peasant-revolt ringleaders, not to mention sending your troops in for a bit of rape and pillage just to teach them a lesson afterwards, but I’m sure the socks will make them all feel that bit better about the whole oppression thing.

Just an aside, Boxing Day is also known as St. Stephens Day in Britain, so obviously Stephen is the patron saint of middle-class guilt.  Hey, somebody’s got to do it.

So with that in mind, I now have to depart in a flurry of well-wishes, expensive Christmas gifts and general good-will to all mankind…

… hehe, okay, okay, my little joke.  I’ll just bugger off with my usual mumbled “yeah, merry whatever, catch you round sometime then, I guess” instead.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and most importantly of all, a rollicking Boxing Day to all.

Kath

<<insert Christmas picture of your choice here… or, alternatively, this being Boxing Day, a picture of a Box>>

Categories: Unsolicited opinion
Tags: Boxing Day, Saint Stephen's Day