What is Boxing Day?

Well today is the 26th December 2008 and in Australia and other countries abroad, that means today is Boxing Day. This white man doesn't mind the day after Christmas being a holiday - in fact I think whoever came up with the idea made an inspired decision. For I have to admit, who feels like functioning normally, still with the gluttinous remnants of overindulgence, foodwise or otherwise, from the day before?! In Melbourne, Boxing Day also means the start of the now traditional Boxing Day cricket match at the MCG, this year between Australia and South Africa. It also is synonymous with a human stampede of avid bargain-hunting shoppers at department stores like Myer. Boxing Day is a day of rest, relaxation, rampant retail and recuperation. But after all these years this white man has a question...what exactly is Boxing Day anyway? As I said, I don't mind having a holiday to acknowledge Boxing day but I have to admit, even after 37 years of basking in it, I still don't have the foggiest idea as to what the day actually commemorates. And so it's about time I found out!

According to that most 'reliable' of internet sources Wikipedia, Boxing Day is based on the tradition of giving gifts to the less fortunate members of society. 'On this day in England, the Christmas Box was opened and the gifts inside were distributed to the poor.' What was the Christmas Box you ask? The Christmas Box itself was a wooden box centrally placed in the village square where village folk could donate their item - much in the same way as they have those boxes in the front of supermarkets where you can place a can of food or other suitable non-perishable item for a charitable organisation to distribute to the needy at Christmas. Yet as Wiki importantly highlights 'contemporary Boxing Day in many countries is now a "shopping holiday" associated with after-Christmas sales.'

And therein lays the irony - on the day originally, when celebrations centred around benevolent acts of charity for the poor, now we celebrate Boxing day by being totally self-indulgent, either by loafing around on our lounges all day or by abusing those plastic demons called credit cards! I guess that's the 'developed' world we live in today. A world I find myself very much being a part of, challengingly and vexingly so. A world Paul summed up pretty well in 2 Timothy 3:2-4. So why is this white man not surprised, yet profoundly convicted...Mmm...