Boxing Day

When I was growing up, Boxing Day was a day to visit with friends in town. My parents would take us to their friend’s place and while they visited, we would play with the friends’ children, or listen to the adults. It was a relaxed day as I remember it.

When my wife and I married, the Boxing Day tradition continued, as it was part of her family’s tradition as well. Her family was on the mainland, and she had many aunts, uncles, Great Aunts, and Great Uncles and Grandparents to visit. The day was fun, but stressful. We would start out about 11:00 AM to make the first visit by noon in Vancouver. We had a route all planned and most years it went without a hitch. As most newly married couples did, we spent one year with my wife’s family and the next year with mine. My family was on Vancouver Island, so we spent Xmas with my family, returned to Vancouver on Boxing Day and made the rounds to my wife’s family.

Every place you visited had way too much food, and they expected you to eat, drink and make merry, so with a big Christmas meal, a huge boxing day feast, I would gain a lot of weight over the holiday. The other tradition that my wife’s family had was a big family dinner on New Year’s Day. This was a fun time once the effects of the night before had worn off.

Time went on, and my parents passed and my wife’s father passed and we had children. These cosmic events went away. Too bad I miss them, but not enough to bring them back. We now have a small Xmas day and do not celebrate Boxing Day with a massive meal, nor do we have an enormous meal on New Year’s Day. However you celebrate these days, I hope they are all you want and need them to be.

Boxing Day

Christmas has come and gone, and we are moving on to the new year. I hope your celebration was everything you wanted. Boxing Day is an interesting day. When I was young and in my teens, Boxing day was a day that was a time for visiting relatives or friends that we did not see on Christmas Day. My parents would dress up and we would go off for an afternoon of visiting. In our case, we went to my parent's friends in town and my parents would spend the day drinking and talking with their friends while the children would be forced to hang out with kids we never hang out with normally. 

My wife and her family experience a similar but different experience each Boxing Day. For them, Boxing Day was a day to visit with cousins and relatives who had not made it to their big Christmas Day celebrations. 

As newly married couples do, we sought to find a way to deal with both families around Christmas. What I realized looking back is that we came from two different cultures around Christmas and Boxing Day. I found it hard, not in a bad way, to get used to my the culture my wife and her family held dear at Christmas.  

My family celebrated Christmas in a small way, with a small (a maximum of 5 people) family dinner. My wife's family held a large Christmas feast, with never less than 30 people, all relatives in attendance. Boxing Day was a time to visit all of the other relatives who could not make Christmas, and this was achieved by having a great aunt or cousin hold a potluck drop in the afternoon (which lasted until late evening). 

New Year's Day, was another round of visiting after a big family party, which was always held at my wife's parents' house. New Year's day was a time for visiting all the relatives again.  It was a hectic time and it became our culture when our kids were young.

Over time as people became older, the traditions started to fade. People died, became ill, could not travel, the reasons were real and over time we lost the tradition of the big family gathering at Christmas. I miss it. 

Boxing Day is now an opportunity to line up at the stores for the biggest sale of the year. The day is not the same. Do you have any family traditions that have changed over the years?