Gift ideas for Boxing Day
Boxing Day is celebrated the day after Christmas in England and other countries. This year, why not give a give a gift of a donation in a friend’s name for Boxing Day?
Before you can start checking out gifts for Boxing Day, it would help to know what it is.
Boxing Day is celebrated on December 26th or if the 26th should happen to fall on a Saturday or Sunday, the Monday following the 26th.
It is an official holiday and it is celebrated in England – where it originated during the reign of Queen Victoria – Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.
Boxing Day, which is also known as St. Stephen’s Day, was started as a way for the upper class to give gifts to the lower class and in the olden days those gifts could include money, goods, food, and even an extra day off for their servants to spend with their family. Some upper class citizens even went the extra mile and helped served the lower class meals, tended to their ills, and donated their time to simply help.
There are two theories as to how Boxing Day even got started and then added to by the upper class. The first theory is that merchants would give boxes containing food, clothing, and money to their employees as a form of Christmas bonus and because they were giving in boxes, the holiday subsequently got its name. The second theory is that this was the day the churches opened the alms boxes and distributed the contents of them to the poor and needy. Today, it is a government holiday and most small businesses are closed. The malls and larger stores, however, are open to allow people to exchange gifts or shop on one of the biggest shopping days of the year.
Many people still enjoy celebrating Boxing Day and exchange gifts with friends that were busy spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with family. People sometimes find themselves at a loss, however, on what to buy someone for a Boxing Day gift. If you want to go back to some of the original traditions of the holiday, you could give the gift of donating you time in a friends name to a homeless shelter serving meals, or giving money or gifts to the poor, or even adopting a family in need and aiding them. Cash donations in a friends name to a worthy charity is a great gift and one that is not usually though off.
If you prefer to give a gift to your friend that they may find useful, you could purchase them a year of online computer services, or an offline service such as a Netflix subscription, certificates to iTunes or Audible, or gift certificates to their favorite restaurants for an enjoyable dinner on you. And you could even make them something for Boxing Day, a gift that says they mean a lot to you and that you thought about them during the holiday season.
Interesting. I run a website for creating gift lists for any occasion, but frankly, Boxing Day did not enter my mind. Time to correct the mistake!
January 12th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
I think the perfect idea is to create a unique gift that can be enjoyed for days after Christmas. I bought some Christmas Hampers last year and they went down a treat. Although they didn’t last as long as I’d planned!
July 16th, 2009 at 11:41 am