Boxing Day

The day after Christmas is known in Canada and other places as Boxing Day.

It is also the Feast of Stephen - the first martyr. It's a day to remember suffering Christians around the world. And that number increases all the time.

You can read about Stephen in Acts chapters 6 & 7, where his defence and death by stoning is covered.

Stephen was a Hellenized Jew. That was a group of Jewish people who copied Greek culture but didn’t necessarily come from Greek ancestry. After his conversion to Christianity Stephen was selected as one of the men to look after the distribution of food serving Jerusalem’s Hellenist Jewish converts.

Stephen also preached in his community. He discussed matters with people from the synagogue’s Diaspora Jews. Diaspora Jews were those dispersed after the Babylonian exile outside of Palestine or modern day Israel. This caused problems because of religious, philosophical and political belief in Jewish society.

Stephen, in one of his debates, so outraged them that he was arrested and charged with blasphemy. His defence implied that the temple was idolatrous, likened to the Golden Calf that Aaron had made in the wilderness. Afterwards he was taken out of the city and stoned to death. This was witnessed and assented to by a young man named Saul of Tarsus who went on to have the dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus and become St. Paul.

 

PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC – OCTOBER 17, 2018: The stoning of St. Stephen fresco in the church Kostel Svatého Cyrila Metodeje by S. G. Rudl (1896).

When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg, he introduced many Germanic traditions into fashionable society. Christmas trees and Christmas cards are just two of those. The tradition of Boxing Day, although not directly attributed to the Victorian era, did come into practice at this time, possibly as early as the 1830s.

Boxing Day was a day when people in service were given time off to spend with their families. The people that they were in service to, would give them food (leftovers from their Christmas Day feasting) in some kind of box for their family. From this we get the name Boxing Day.

So boxing day has nothing to do with boxing & shoving for big sales. It has to do with sharing with and blessing others.

The carol “Good King Wenceslas” is a St Stephens Day carol and traditionally sung on that day and not on Christmas Day. The carol is about Wenceslas, who was a king of Bohemia (part of modern day Czechia), giving to a person in need. 

Other reference to boxes and Boxing Day may come from the fact that churches used to have boxes to take collections from people throughout the year. These were opened on December 26 and the money given to the poor.