The True Meaning of Boxing Day

I woke up on Boxing Day feeling tired and depressed. I wondered to myself what the point to this holiday was and why it existed in the first place. As far as I could see, every Christmas people come together as a family for love, and then the very next day all of that is forgotten and replaced by a mindless consumer orgy. Normally I just spend this meaningless day reading in my room, but on this particular Boxing Day I was invited out to a party with some friends. This alternative to shopping gave me hope. This year, I was going to enjoy friendship and I wasn’t going to all of that consumerism get to me!

I went to go pick up my good friend, Zach, on the way to the party and I expressed my frustrations with December 26^th. He listened while I ranted and once I was finished he said, “You know what you need? A cookie,” and offered me a molasses cookie out of the tin he was carrying. I sighed, but accepted since molasses cookies are delicious. We spent the remainder of the drive discussing various philosophical issues and totally not just talking about X-Men.

We got distracted by our debate, got lost, and arrived at the party an hour later than intended. When we finally entered the host’s house I was surprised to find only five other people (including the host) were there.

“Where is everybody?” I asked.

“I think most of them are Boxing Day shopping,” replied Joanna.

“Kevin just called and said he forgot, but would be coming sometime within the next eight hours,” said our host, Jen, or maybe it was her twin sister Erika. I’m never quite sure which is which and they were both standing right next to each other.

“I fucking hate you guys,” supplied Brendan who was almost certainly only here because he had nothing better to do.

Dana took our pictures.

I was deeply saddened by this news, but decided to make the best of it just the same and broke out some board games. We had hardly played for half an hour before Joanna received a text from Lily talking about some amazing sales that were going on and how we should all come and cash in on these deals. I was none too impressed by any of this, but Brendan wanted some new headphones, Dana wanted a new camera lens, Zach wanted to piss me off, and the others wanted to stock up on manga/anime. So out we went to the meet up Lily and a few others at the mall while I grumbled all the way.

As was expected, the mall was jammed packed with customers and it was almost impossible to find our other friends, but we eventually found them at the food court already laden down with countless shopping bags.

“Woooo! Let’s go buy some more clothes,” shouted Lily as soon as we’d greeted each other. I don’t much care for shopping to begin with, and I especially hate shopping when it’s busy, and hate shopping for clothes even more, so this was about the worst possible thing that could have happened. While everybody else ran around picking up everything they could find that met the basic requirements of looking cute and being cheap, I sat in a corner and moped as I tend to do on such occasions. I looked around the store with disinterest until my eyes landed on a humble little toque on top of a shelf. My old toque hasn’t fit on my head since I was twelve, so I figured I might as well pick up a new one. I took it up to the cashier who rang it up at ten dollars. Lily suddenly appeared behind me and inquired what I was buying.

“It’s a toque,” I answered.

“Cool. I much is it?”

“Ten dollars.”

"Even with the sale?” asked Joanna who as she came up on my other side.

“I don’t think it is on sale.”

“What? Then why would you get it?” queried Brendan who had come over to see what was going on.

“Because I like it.”

“Well there’s a different toque right over here that’s 50% off. Just think of the savings!” Dana contributed.

“I like this one better, but thanks anyways.”

“You’re weird man. You don’t get Boxing Day at all,” observed Lily.

“I must admit that I do not. Is there anybody here who can explain to me why we all go apeshit every December 26^th over crap we don’t need? Can anybody explain to me what Boxing Day is really all about?”

“I can Snake-Eyes,” chimed in Zach, “lights please.” The lighting didn’t change at all, but he launched into his monologue anyway. “So every year right after we celebrate the birth of baby Jesus and things like love, family, generosity and all that good stuff, the next day we all reflect on boxing. Not the fighting type of boxing, but like the boxing where you put things into boxes. The reason for this is because the day after Jesus was born and all the people had brought their gifts, Mary and Joseph needed a place to store all the stuff because how is a baby supposed to use things like gold, frankincense and myrrh? But they were poor and in a manger filled with animals, right? So they didn’t really have any safe place to store it away from the elements. But since Joseph was a carpenter he just made a bunch of boxes out of wood and put all the stuff in there and then kept it around the back. That’s the true meaning of Boxing Day, Snake-Eyes.”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Zach? That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard,” I exclaimed.

“Well what did you expect me to say? It’s just an excuse to buy stuff at ridiculously low prices.”

“Oh now I get it. On second thought, I will get that cheaper toque.”

And then we all sang the classic Boxing Day song, “Eye of the Tiger.”

The End