In England a long time ago ...

Servants were required to work on Christmas. They were responsible for making the holiday run smoothly for wealthy landowners. They were allowed to take leave on December 26th and visit their families. The employers gave each servant a box containing gifts and bonuses. In addition, around the 800s' churches opened their alms boxes (boxes where people place monetary donations) and distributed the contents to poor.

In England today ...

Few people have servants but the custom of giving gifts or money to those who provide service continues. It is also popular to visit grandparents and shop (the after Christmas discounts begin). Many people get the day off from work. Watching sports especially horse races is also a popular activity. Boxing Day is also celebrated in places where the English have settled or have influence like Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Scotland.

Boxing Day is a continuation of the Christmas holiday in Europe and the Commonwealth countries. The name refers to both the day after Christmas Day, December 26, and the Public holiday which follows Christmas Day, should the 26th and 27th fall on a weekend. It is generally celebrated with people staying home with family as they did on Christmas Day, and for retail stores it is used as a name for post-Christmas sales (ie, Boxing Day Sale).

There are disparate theories as to the origins of the term. The more common stories include:

• 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 26th, 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 Britain 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 one gigantic lockbox in which the donations were left. The origins of Boxing Day can be traced back to regular punch-ups caused by excessive intake of alcohol by the aristocracy. It became popular and a pastime for families with unsettled issues of wealth and status.
• Boxing Day was the day when the wren, the king of birds,[3] 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. See Frazer's Golden Bough.

  Because the staff had to work on such an important day as Christmas Day by serving the master of the house and their family, they were given the following day off. Since being kept away from their own families to work on a traditional religious holiday and not being able to celebrate Christmas Dinner, the customary benefit was to 'box' up the left over food from Christmas Day and send it away with the servants and their families. Hence the 'boxing' of food became 'boxing day'.

In common usage, when 26 December falls on a Sunday, this is now referred to as Boxing Day despite Boxing Day officially occurring on 27 December. In the latter half of the twentieth century in the United Kingdom, when 26 December was a Sunday it was referred to as Christmas Sunday, and "Boxing Day" in popular usage referred to the 27th.

In some Commonwealth countries, fixed-date holidays falling on Saturday or Sunday are often observed on the next weekday, so if Boxing Day falls on a Saturday then Monday 28 December is a public holiday; in the UK and other countries this is accomplished by Royal Proclamation. If Christmas Day falls on a Saturday itself then the Boxing Day holiday is automatically on the following Monday, and no Royal Proclamation is required. In such a circumstance, a 'substitute bank holiday in lieu of Christmas Day' is declared for Tuesday 28 December, this being the next available working day - thus the Boxing Day holiday occurs before the substitute Christmas holiday.

Although the same legislation (Bank Holidays Act 1871) originally established the Bank Holidays throughout the British Isles, the holiday after Christmas was defined as Boxing Day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and St Stephen's Day for The Republic Of Ireland (and now by a few people in Northern Ireland). St Stephen's Day is fixed as the 26 December.

As in most of the rest of the UK and Ireland, the day after Christmas Day was always most significant in the day-to-day events of Wales. Some activities that took place on this day seem peculiarly Welsh, including that of "holly-beating" or "holming." In this, it was customary for young men and boys to slash the unprotected arms of female domestic servants with holly branches until they bled. In some areas it was the legs that were beaten. In others, it was the custom for the last person to get out of bed in the morning to be beaten with sprigs of holly and made to carry out all the commands of his family. On many farms, horses and other animals were bled in a custom that was thought to be good for the animals' health, even increasing their stamina! Luckily for the livestock, and for the young women of the neighborhood who earned their keep as domestics, not to mention those who stayed in bed of a morning, these customs died out before the end of the 19th century.

Boxing Day in the UK is traditionally a day for sporting activity, originally fox hunting, but in modern times football and horse racing.

Boxing Day (in French, lendemain de Noël, "day after Christmas") is also observed as a public holiday in Commonwealth countries, and is a day when stores sell their excess Christmas inventory at significantly reduced prices. Boxing Day has become so important for retailers that they often extend it into a "Boxing Week". This occurs similarly in Australia and New Zealand, although some Australian states, including New South Wales are tightening restrictions on Boxing Day retail trading[2], deferring the post-Christmas sales to December 27.

In Australia, a test match starting on December 26th is called the Boxing Day Test Match, and is played at the Melbourne Cricket Ground before, what is typically, the largest crowd of the summer. The Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race is also started on this day.

In Northern Ireland, all Premier League clubs in soccer-football play their biggest rivals. The most popular one is Glentoran v. Linfield, between the two biggest clubs in the country.

Boxing Day is a holiday of peculiarly British origin, but in most years it falls on the same day as the Feast of St. Stephen (St. Stephen's Day - 26th December).

In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Norway, Iceland, Poland, Slovakia, and Sweden, the 26th is known as the Second day of Christmas.

In Ireland, the 26th December is known as St Stephen's Day, or Wren's Day; in Austria it is called Stefanitag, in Italy Santo Stefano; in Wales, it is known as St. Stephen's Holiday. In Catalonia, this day is known as Sant Esteve, Catalan for St. Stephen. A practice known as Hunt the Wren is still practiced by some in the Isle of Man, where people thrash out wrens from hedgerows. Traditionally they were killed and their feathers presented to households for good luck. In Ireland, children used to kill a wren, then take its body from door-to-door, begging for money which they would use (supposedly) to pay for the bird's funeral. In Germany the days between Christmas and new year are called "the days between the years" and becoming more and more important for retailers to clear the unsold Christmas goods.

In Canada, Boxing Day is observed as a holiday, except for those in the retail business. Boxing Day and the days immediately following are when many retail stores sell their Christmas and retired model products by holding clearance sales. Some shoppers will line up for hours at night (sometimes before midnight and after midnight on December 26) for retailers to open their doors. Except in Quebec, Retailers often open their stores earlier than usual, such as 6 or 7 am. Some retail companies internally refer to the sales week after Christmas as the "thirteenth month." (See Boxing Week.) It is similar to Black Friday (the day after Thanksgiving) in the United States. Boxing Day 2005 was the single largest economic transaction day ever in the history of Canadian commerce (according to Visa). Individual big box stores can even gross over $1,000,000(CAN) on one single boxing day.

However, in a few cities retail stores are still not permitted to open on Boxing Day because of municipal regulations; in those cities, Boxing Day sales begin on December 27.

In addition to the retail aspect of the holiday, Boxing Day also serves as a second day for families to gather for dinner and to exchange gifts. Boxing Day Dinner is, in many ways, just as much a part of many families traditions as Christmas Dinner itself.

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