Boxing Day (aka St Stephens Day) - the view from my couch

For an Australian, Boxing Day means many things, including:

• a public holiday to get over the excesses of the previous day and eat leftovers as sandwiches and salads, and/or hangover nursing;
• if you're in Melbourne, perhaps attending the first day of the Boxing Day Test cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground - this year the Test series is Australia v India. Elsewhere, taking it in from the couch (where you could stay for the next 5 days, as a test match could last that long - the next one always starts in Sydney on New Years Day);
• a trip to the beach or a picnic or barbecue in a park;
• the release of new blockbusters at the cinema;
• visits to the relatives you didn't see yesterday (in-laws often alternate between Christmas and Boxing Day in successive years);
• the start of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race (see my 24 Dec blog) - perhaps baggsing a spot on a headland round the harbour to watch the start of the race;
• pushing and shoving your way through the opening day of the sales at major retail stores;
• getting away early for the drive to your summer beach holiday. I always think of Boxing Day as the "real" start to summer hols.

Boxing Day is usually thought to have its origins in the practice of giving gifts between peers, and amongst the upper classes on Christmas Day, with servants dancing attendance on the guests in the grand manors, and then the servants receiving gratuities the following day, Boxing Day. Or perhaps on large estates, all the serfs could gather together for family festivities, and the day after Christmas was a convenient one for the lord of the manor to dispense the yearly stipends.

Here's a number of theories about the origin*.

* Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says: "Boxes placed in churches for casual offerings used to be opened on Christmas day, and the contents, called 'the dole of the Christmas box' or the 'box money', were distributed next day by priests. Apprentices also used to carry a box around to their masters' customers for small gratuities."