Ok. ok. I really should know this but why is it called Boxing Day? I believe it is also St. Stephens day in the Christian Calendar but I don’t think he has anything to do with boxes? Doe he? The Christian Saints do seem very perculiar at times.
I inherited my grandmothers Eternity ring today. An eternity ring is what you get from your husband after the engagement ring and the wedding band to promise true love forever. I have a bit of jewellery from Grandma that was originally given her by Grandad but this ring she wore until she died. makes me feel odd, maybe a little cyclical.
I miss my Grandma, I was over at my Aunty’s today where Grandma used to live and there was no escaping from my other relatives by diving into Grandma’s room. Just boxes of stuff as they sort out her things into family and friends and charity shops.
Death is a curiously final thing and yet somehow it’s very impermanent. Her stuff, all the nick nacks collecting in a life of travel (she emigrated to Australia via Africa but came back by way of India and also visited America), that’ll all be boxed up and gone. I’m not sure what’ll happen to the flat, a new coat of paint probably and it’ll be absorbed into the living family. But the memories, I have them, random snippets and glimpses of her in my life, and then theres the aural history. I know so much about her life before I was there. And pre her too, stuff that she knew about her grandmother and great grandmother, grandfathers and fathers and such too.
We’re all collectors of life, everything in this world is a cycle, a circle, a spiral. We know the stories of our families stretching back and we’re constantly living out own stories stretching forwards. An eternity of little lives of no consequence to anyone but ourselves and that makes it consequencial to forever somehow….
…funny what an Eternity ring will make you think.
I typed ‘Boxing Day’ into Dictionary.com, and it came up with the following definitions from two different dictionaries:
– The first weekday after Christmas, celebrated as a holiday in parts of the British Commonwealth, when Christmas gifts are traditionally given to service workers.
– The first week day after Christmas, a legal holiday on which Christmas boxes are given to postmen, errand boys, employees, etc. The night of this day is boxing night. [Eng.]
There’s a lengthier explanation here: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/boxing.asp
Thank you, Google.
I asked my Grandad that when I was small and he was still alive. He said his family wouldn’t let him open Xmas presents until the day after Christmas Day (due to being in Church and spending time with family and cooking/eating lunch on the day itself, there was little time left for presents). He always thought as a kid that boxing day was the day when he got to open his Christmas boxes or presents. Maybe that’s partly where it comes from.
Hurrah for Google, Miss Unexpected Directions and Archie! Thankyou 🙂