WHAT IS BOXING DAY?

We have been wondering for weeks why Boxing Day is celebrated and what it means. I have asked many Australians and they don't seem to really know - at least the ones I talked to didn't. Jokingly I told them it was just an excuse to have a day off of work and go to the beach.

Finally I looked it up using Wikipedia, here is what they said:

Boxing Day is a traditional celebration, dating back to the Middle Ages, and consisted of the practice of giving out gifts to employees, the poor, or to people in a lower social class.

The more common stories include:

• It was the day when people would give a present or Christmas box to those who had worked for them throughout the year.
  
• In feudal times, Christmas was a reason for a gathering of extended families. All the serfs would gather their families in the manor of their lord, which made it easier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christmas parties on 26 December, the lord of the estate would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would get a box full of such goods the day after Christmas. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obliged to supply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Boxing Day.
  
• Because the staff had to work on such an important day as Christmas by serving the master of the house and their family, they were given the following day off. As servants were kept away from their own families to work on a traditional religious holiday and were not able to celebrate Christmas Dinner, the customary benefit was to "box" up the leftover food from Christmas Day and send it away with the servants and their families. (Similarly, as the servants had the 26th off, the owners of the manor may have had to serve themselves pre-prepared, boxed food for that one day.) Hence the "boxing" of food became "Boxing Day".

Well, we have since found out that there is also a big Cricket game in Melbourne and a yacht race from Sydney to Hobart. It is also a huge shopping day for big discounts. Also, yes, hundreds of people go to the beach.

We didn't do any of those things. We actually spent the morning on the web cam talking to family. Then we had lunch and a rest. After that I felt cooped up so we headed to the park by our house for a picnic dinner and a play. We get to walk through the bush to get to the park so it is quite the adventure. Madi is always on the look out for spider webs - she is a little more worried about spiders here than she ever was back home (just like me I suppose - there are some dangerous ones here).