Boxing Day

A Birmingham Prize Fight, 1789 by W Allen, courtesy Birmingham Museums Trust

As a young child - we’re talking 5 or 6 years old at most - I thought Boxing Day was so called because it was a day when boxing matches took place. If there was a logic for this, it was a vague awarenesses on my part that the day after Christmas was an occasion for sporting events in general, football and rugby matches, horse racing. Boxing wasn’t so much of a stretch.

Boxing Day has, of course, nothing to do with pugilism but its precise origins are a bit muddled. In the Middle Ages there was a tradition of alms boxes placed in churches which were used to collect money for the poor, these offerings distributed on St Stephens Day ie 26th December. Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for 19 December 1663 makes reference to giving something towards the Christmas box of his shoemaker, a common arrangement amongst tradesmen and their clientele. And then there was - probably still is - the Downton Abbey mob who generously gave their servants a box containing a gift on the 26th together with any leftover food from the previous day, before they had to get back to the kitchens to make a three course lunch for the returning fox hunting party.

Alms boxes, Christmas boxes, donations of leftover food, a recurring pattern through the centuries, a society where our poorest rely on others for basic needs. What sort of country has a day in the calendar that celebrates this?