And the week of final series’ post continues here for Blogmas 2022! We’ve been looking at several different saints’ days that play a prominent role in the holiday season for the Saints’ Days series. Firstly, we looked at St. Andrew’s Day (30 November) to start the season and St. Nicholas’ Day (6 December), a major gift-giving holiday in many countries. Then we shift to St. Lucia’s Day (13 December), another gift-giving and feasting holiday. Las Posadas lasts from 16 to 24 December. This week we finish up with one very important topic: the history of St. Stephen’s Day, aka Boxing Day!
The History of St. Stephen’s Day (26 December)
St. Stephen was the first martyr in the Christian church, so his feast day has long held importance. St. Stephen’s Day has been connected with horses for over a millennium. This is possibly due to a pagan connection to horse sacrifices, but it takes a much nicer tone in the medieval period. On 26 December, traditionally horses would be given extra hay, and treats, were raced, and sometimes even paraded.
Boxing Day, what we in Commonwealth countries call 26 December, also dates back to the medieval period. There is no one source pointing to this, but historians think that the day is known as Boxing Day as the church alms box would be distributed amongst the parish poor the day after Christmas.
How is Boxing Day Celebrated Now?
In Commonwealth countries, Boxing Day is a statutory holiday, meaning that one either doesn’t work or receives extra pay if they do. In the UK and Ireland, the day is commonly marked by horse racing. Boxing Day is also a massive shopping day. Traditionally, in the last 40-50 years Boxing Day has been marked with very discounted prices on everything that did not sell for Christmas. However, “Boxing Day”/”Boxing Week” sales can start in the third week of December now…
Were you familiar with the history of St. Stephen’s Day?
Cheers,
The Historian
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