Well this is Boxing Day and what are you doing?
Always an odd one, like Sunday after a Saturday and despite the ecclesiastical Yuletide season lasting until Candlemass, for many now Christmas is over by Boxing Day.
It's still festive but true Christmas has been and gone I feel.
This year, for the Missus and me, Boxing Day is a day of rest after a particularly jolly family Christmas Eve and Day at our daughter's house in Thackley, eating, singing, opening prezzies and playing games.
It wasn't always a day of rest though.
As a kid in the Sixties, Boxing Day was a much bigger family affair than Christmas itself, as all the various branches of the clan, the five families, descended on my parents' house in Preston to eat, play, dance, talk and grown-up drink. Lots of drink!
Looking back I don't know how my Mum pulled it off. She must have been knackered already after getting everything ready for 5 children on Christmas Eve, cooking for 10 on Christmas Day and knocking up a buffet for 30+ on Boxing Day. I'd like to think my Dad helped her. He will have certainly sorted out all the booze at least. I bet Mum couldn't wait for the 27th, when she could put her feet up and watch the Onedin Line again like normal for a few days, before further graft to make New Year happen! That too required further food and drink for neighbours this time, the war generation at last at ease, dancing to Frank Sinatra in the lounge and kissing each other's husbands and wives at midnight, sometimes rather too much as in my Dad's case!
For me the end of the Christmas Season was the mournful sounding of the ships' horns on Preston Docks as the clock struck twelve on News Years Eve, a sound from the past recorded clearly in my child's mind.
My two older brothers and one older Sister still living in Lancashire do still convene at her house on Boxing Day and probably have continuously since our parents died decades ago, a truly valiant effort to keep the spirit of our Sixties home alive.
Having moved away young and living abroad, then ultimately settling in Yorkshire a good few hours drive away from Lancashire's coast, I haven't been able to keep up really.
Seeing my siblings throughout the year anyway, nowadays I focus on enjoying the season with my wife and our own family here, which in itself requires quite a bit of travel to Shipley or the Dales.
This year, as we are at home slowly getting ready for friends staying for a week as of tomorrow, to celebrate Boxing Day 2025 and the spirit of what it once was for me, I shall be watching Carry on Screaming on the telly soon, it's crazy monster antics so reminding me of my happy monster-filled childhood in the 1960's and early 70's.
We'll be frying tonight!
What are you doing today readers? Was Boxing Day a big day as a kid for you?
Wow, what a lovely remembrance! Your holidays (and your parents) were certainly special back then! SFZ
ReplyDeleteThanks SF. They really were golden days from 1960 to Christmas 1977. I wish I could remember much more detail.
DeleteChristmas Day was presents and a chicken dinner at home, with maybe a visit to my dad's brothers, and families, in Wilsden, near Cottingly.
ReplyDeleteBoxing Day, it was off to my mum's sister's, where my Polish uncle Tony (who worked at a butcher's and pie making company in Bradford) served home cured ham, with the best gravy I've ever tasted.
Sounds fab Mish, especially that ham and best gravy! Cottingley? As in the fairies?
DeleteYep !
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had quite a busy and festive Christmas Woodsy! As for today, to put it in the colloquial: We ain't doin' nuttin'! I'm not looking forward to putting all this stuff back in The Cave so probably won't start the task until after New Year's. Besides, that gives me another week to enjoy the train layout.
ReplyDelete