Boxing Day in the USA

Yanks don't do Boxing Day. Innit shame. They go back to work the very next day after Xmas. Land of the free? What a swizz. Even the Canadians get Boxing Day. But what does Boxing Day mean to a lime juicer from Liverpool? Big sales on high streets and huge reductions in malls and department stores. Think Black Friday before Black Friday became an unneeded retail event in the U.K. That Boxing Day: the holy day of the year when all of your Xmas presents get slashed to half-price. What a swizz on us. Ho-ho-ho!  

Boxing Day, for a kid growing up in Liverpool, meant EFC or LFC playing footie on the telly AND a non-licensed, five-round dust up with my younger brother (a needless and ultra-violent Christmas tradition that endured until quite recently). Of course "Boxing Day" has nowt to do with the noble art of fisticuffs. But, like the sport of boxing, it's a Victorian tradition that started in 1871. Servants of big houses had the day off and their families received gift boxes from their masters for working on the holy day of five and twentieth. Hence Boxing Day. Now in the 21st Century, in countries like the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, Boxing Day is a much needed rest after Christmas for master and servant alike.   

But before Boxing Day there was Christmas itself. This year I attended Midnight Mass in Virginia Highland at "the Church of Our Savior". The show kicked off with a Coronation Street trumpet player in the church band. However, this being an "Anglo-Catholic parish" I was soon gassed in the pew by incense. Coughing and teary-eyed like a trench rat, I composed myself in time for the first reading. A southern belle in Santa red ensemble and boots too kinky for church strolled up to the lectern. It was from Isaiah 62:6-12...

 "Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted sentinels; all day and night they shall never be silent..." Oh, dear. A bit of Trump-like sentiment and subtext from the off. "...The Lord has sworn by his right hand and by his mighty arm: I will not again give your grain to be food for your enemies, and foreigners shall not drink the wine for which you have labored..." 

Choked by incense, and the foul and sinister forces of Popery, I sought exit with the zeal of a Puritan. "What's the matter?" asked the wife. "Popery," I lamented on the church steps. "Potpourri?" "No," I snapped. "POPERY." I didn't even make it to the Nicene Creed. So much for Midnight Mass. It was straight to bed at HQ in Taco Town with an old episode of The Hardy Boys and vivid dreams about burning Jesuits in Elizabethan England with Sir Francis Walsingham.   

On Christmas Day I awoke to carol song from the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, and an article in the Guardian newspaper about foxhunting. Ah, the traditional Boxing Day meet of the local hounds. The smell of sausages and mulled wine, the laughter of Christmas tales from 16 hands high, fitted redcoats and quite dreadful accents, such a shame that hunting foxes with hounds is still illegal in the UK. Hunting an artificial trail is now the legit substitute on Boxing Day. As for the ban itself, there are still fears in the countryside that it may never be lifted. People are becoming more urban in the UK, divorced from the concerns of rural life. It will take much to defeat the ban and repeal the 2004 Hunting Act. 

I don't hunt. I'm a member of the Labour Party. So, why do I support hunting with hounds? Unemployment and underemployment is high in the English countryside. Hunting is good for the rural economy and the fox population needs to be capped (NOT killed off!) for the long-term sake of ground nesting birds such as the lapwing, curlew and grey partridge. There must be a balance between the environment and species and hunting plays a role in that. Notwithstanding, the English countryside, and its rural culture, has always been under threat from prejudiced townies and avaricious property developers. Both of whom view hunting as a minority pastime for the wealthy.  Hopefully, the new government will reverse the ban on foxhunting. Or not.           

And what of Boxing Day in the USA? There's no hunt to meet but the local gun club in Buckhead is open for biz. More to the point, it's vacation over and back to the grind. "They all go back to work," my American Dad used to say, scoffing at the memory of his homeland 4000 miles away in England. That's what's great about home. Everything shuts down. The pace of life slows. People start to fret about the future. What to do? Where to go? It's usually something bonkers like running a marathon for the first time. Some opt for a Dry January instead. There's no such crisis here at HQ in Atlanta. No need to bin habits or adopt new ones. Life will always be a Punch and Judy show. Ding-ding, seconds out, that's my Boxing Day resolution.