Day Five (or Eight): Boxing Day

If any readers of this blog have kept count, they would know that technically this should be Day Eight. I’m claiming Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as holidays that did not require me to write. Now what about the 26^th? Well, check your calendar. If you have a calendar from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and some other Commonwealth nations, you know that was Boxing Day on which occasion you should have offered gifts to your servants. Apparently they get the left-overs from Christmas.

If you have a Christian calendar, then you know that the 26^th is St. Stephen’s Day, a public holiday in most of those countries that celebrate Boxing Day. It shows up in that curious Christmas carol about Wenceslas I, Duke of Bohemia, “Good King Wenceslas,” who, according to the text, “looked out on the feast of Stephen.”

So, on two grounds – one secular and one sacred – I could claim an additional holiday that exempted me from a day of writing.  But I shall claim neither. I have another place to stand in defense of my neglect of the blog and my violation of my stated discipline of daily writing – it was my birthday.

That’s right, the day after Christmas. I have long sympathized with those whose birthdays fall in the proximity of Christmas Day. I was once part of a support group in our church, which included one person born on Christmas Eve and named “Christy Eve.” I have had clerks ask as they look at my driver’s license before accepting a check: “Oh, your birthday’s the day after Christmas. What’s that like?” I was at Sports Clips a week ago because they sent me a coupon for a free haircut in December as a birthday present. The stylist asked, “So when in December is your birthday?” “The day after Christmas.” “Oh,” she said. “That must be kind of strange.”

Kind of strange? Like in people wishing you “Merry Birthday?” Like in your mother presenting you with a mixing bowl turned upside down with a candle on it on your first birthday? (Not so bad, since as a one year old I had no idea about the traditions of my species on birthdays. But photographing it and thinking I would not grow up to be bright enough to know the difference? Priceless.)  Like in getting a pair of shoes from your grandmother and being told one is for your birthday and one is for Christmas? Kind of strange like getting a card from your family with a picture of two parrots and a rock on the front, reading, “Two Birds, One Stone.” Inside it said, “Merry Christmas. Happy Birthday.”  Like the monthly office party celebrating birthdays in January through November that turns into a Christmas party in December? Kind of strange like people completely forgetting that it is your birthday because they are just too exhausted from Christmas?

"Yeah," I told her, "sometimes." But I don't really mind since the competition in this matter is Jesus. Christmas is His birthday. I get it. So, no, I'm not going to challenge that. 

 

But people who have been around me for a while know this whole schtick of birthday whining and give it back to me in equal parts. Once on the 26^th of June our office staff invited me to a half-birthday party replete with half a cake. I have had several small plastic mixing bowls adorned with a candle presented to me. I have received birthday gifts of items picked up at Walgreens the day after Christmas when they are 75% off, with the Merry Christmas marked out and Happy Birthday penned over them. Yesterday the sky was dark and gray and dripped rain for the fourth day in a row. I received a call from a friend: “I was driving along and feeling a bit down and depressed,  wondering why, and then I remembered, it is your birthday.”

So for the fifty-ninth time, Christmas came and went and so did Boxing Day. But I was so busy celebrating that day I just couldn't find time to write.