Boxing Day is December 26th, and it’s one of those holidays that used to mean something practical before it got fuzzy.
Here’s the core of it:
• Origin (very old, very British):
“Boxes” weren’t cardboard things from Amazon — they were alms boxes, tip boxes, and gift chests.
On the day after Christmas, the wealthy households and churches would open those boxes and give money, food, or goods to servants, tradespeople, and the poor.
• Servants finally got a day off
Christmas Day was work-heavy for servants — cooking, hosting, cleaning.
Boxing Day was their day:
they got gifts, cash, leftovers, and time to visit family.
• Church angle
Churches opened their charity boxes on the 26th and distributed the contents.
So it was literally a redistribution day.
• What it quietly meant
Not celebration.
Not spectacle.
But settling accounts, sharing surplus, closing the ritual.
In other words:
Christmas = display
Boxing Day = cleanup, redistribution, reality
Modern times scrambled it:
– UK/Commonwealth → sports, shopping, casual rest
– North America → mostly ignored or mislabeled
– Retail → “sales” (which is kind of ironic, given the original meaning)
But energetically?
It’s still the day the Christmas Spell breaks.
No obligation to feel joy.
No obligation to perform gratitude.
Just: what’s left, and who needs what now?
That’s why it actually fits your work on self so well —
it’s a threshold day, not a holiday.
You could frame it as: “A day designed for clearing, not celebrating.”
And honestly? Boxing Day is ‘way more interesting than Christmas.
– re-think it as a spiritual reset day
– tie it to redistribution of attention, energy, identity
– write a “Boxing Day” song, which is what I’m going to do tonight.
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I did ten “treatments” (arrangements) of tonight’s song, directed toward ten different kinds of bands — which I’ll play for you at today’s zoom meeting.
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Hi ho! It’s the Bardo bus! Everyone get aboard fast!
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See You At The Top!!!
gorby