Boxing Day

Rosewood News Mrs. Kari Ranum entertained the Benhard Ranum family the second day of Christmas. It was 1922, Stan was 8 and his brother, Harry, was 11. Do you suppose it was a carry over from the 'old' country?

Boxing Day is a traditional celebration, dating back to the Medieval Ages, and consisted of the practice of giving out gifts to employees, the poor, or to people in a lower social classes. The dictionary attributes it to the Christmas box, a verb box meaning: "To give a Christmas-box hence boxing-day." Outside the United Kingdom, the day is still celebrated but just with a different name.

It was the day when people would give a present or Christmas box to those who had worked for them throughout the year.


In feudal times, Christmas was a reason for a gathering of extended families. All the serfs would gather their families in the manor of their lord, which made it easier for the lord of the estate to hand out annual stipends to the serfs. After all the Christmas parties on December 26 the lord of the estate would give practical goods such as cloth, grains, and tools to the serfs who lived on his land. Each family would get a box full of such goods the day after Christmas. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obliged to supply these goods. Because of the boxes being given out, the day was called Boxing Day.

In England many years ago, it was common practice for the servants to carry boxes to their employers when they arrived for their day's work on the day after Christmas. Their employers would then put coins in the boxes as special end-of-year gifts. This can be compared with the modern day concept of Christmas bonuses. The servants carried boxes for the coins, hence the name Boxing Day.


In churches, it was traditional to open the church's donation box on Christmas Day, and the money in the donation box was to be distributed to the poorer or lower class citizens on the next day. In this case, the "box" in "Boxing Day" comes from that lockbox in which the donations were left.


Boxing Day was the day when the wren, the king of birds, was captured and put in a box and introduced to each household in the village when he would be asked for a successful year and a good harvest.

Because the staff had to work on such an important day as Christmas by serving the master of the house and their family, they were given the following day off. As servants were kept away from their own families to work on a traditional religious holiday and were not able to celebrate Christmas Dinner, the customary benefit was to "box" up the leftover food from Christmas Day and send it away with the servants and their families. (Similarly, as the servants had the 26th off, the owners of the manor may have had to serve themselves pre-prepared, boxed food for that one day.) Hence the "boxing" of food became "Boxing Day".

It appears boxing day here is the day the city of Fargo is going to pick up the paper chase from Christmas and Tom and I will eat boxed food, that is, left overs! It is also a day to box up the items which did not fit in suitcases and get them ready to ship.

Boxing Day.

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