It always annoys me that the USA starts to dismantle Christmas and goes back to work as soon as the day itself is over. You've got it all wrong. There are twelve days to Christmas and this is just day two. Christmas isn't over till the twelfth drummer drums. Britain won't go back to work until Wednesday - as Christmas fell over the weekend we reckon it doesn't really count as a holidays and tack another day onto the end.
Why is it called Boxing Day? Allow me to go all Wikipedia on you:
"In the UK, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663; This custom is linked to an older English tradition: in exchange for ensuring that wealthy landowners' Christmases ran smoothly, their servants were allowed to take the 26th off to visit their families. The employers gave each servant a box containing gifts and bonuses (and sometimes leftover food)."
All perfectly true. It still goes on today. Though the killjoys at the Post Office today (I wrote this on December 4th) instructed their postmen not to accept Christmas Boxes of over £30 as 'they could be construed as bribes'. First they take away their pensions, then they take away their bonuses, and now this.
I'm not expecting any post this Christmas.
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