You Lucky Peeps Up There........
ChatterBank0 min ago
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To add a little to Ken/s fine answer above...
Click http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/boxing.as
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for a selection of answers. It is an American website and they do not even recognise Boxing Day, but all the various theories are covered there.
However, according to The Oxford English Dictionary - the 'bible' of English words and their meanings - Boxing Day was originally the first weekday after Christmas, so - if that fell on a Friday - it wasn't really Boxing Day until the Monday! Nowadays, of course, it is always on December 26th. The earliest use of the phrase 'Boxing Day' dates back only to the 1830s.
The OED goes on to define the holiday as follows:- It started as a day on which servants, errand-boys, apprentices etc expected to receive a "Christmas Box" or a share of one from their employers/customers. In stately homes, for example, the butler kept an earthenware box into which the employers and their guests put money. This would then be broken open and shared out amongst all the servants on Boxing Day. In other cases, the box may have been of any material, the essential point being that it was a receptacle in which the better-off collected money for the 'lower orders'.
Today, the phrase "Christmas Box" is still used although there are no actual 'boxes' involved. Someone may just hand a �10.00 note to the postman, saying: "There's your Christmas box, John."
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