Tsunami Nurses in Thailand

Boxing Day is the 26th of December. In the U.K., Canada etc. gifts are exchanged on Boxing Day.

PS the Brits kept say "the Tsunami came on Boxer Day" What is Boxer day???

Boxing Day is the day after Christmas Day. I think it got its name because there's an old saying in the UK that the family would be happy and loving on Christmas Day but the next day they would be back to their old ways - fighting (boxing) !!:imbar

Boxing Day is the 26th of December. In the U.K., Canada etc. gifts are exchanged on Boxing Day.

...actually in Canada, gifts are exchanged on Christmas Day not on Boxing day

...I'm a Canadian

:Snowman2:

but it's good to read about the nurses in Thailand - imagine trying to work with all those different nationalities, those nurses must be fantastic!

Boxing Day has nothing to do with the sport of boxing.

On Christmas Day people exchange gifts with their peers. Gifts to servants, tradespeople etc are given on Boxing Day, the day after Christmas.

"At various times, the following "origins" have been loudly asserted as the correct one:

Centuries ago, ordinary members of the merchant class gave boxes of food and fruit to tradespeople and servants the day after Christmas in an ancient form of Yuletide tip. These gifts were an expression of gratitude to those who worked for them, in much the same way that one now tips the paperboy an extra $20 at Christmastime or slips the building's superintendent a bottle of fine whisky. Those long-ago gifts were done up in boxes, hence the day coming to be known as "Boxing Day."

Christmas celebrations in the old days entailed bringing everyone together from all over a large estate, thus creating one of the rare instances when everyone could be found in one place at one time. This gathering of his extended family, so to speak, presented the lord of the manor with a ready-made opportunity to easily hand out that year's stipend of necessities. Thus, the day after Christmas, after all the partying was over and it was almost time to go back to far-flung homesteads, serfs were presented with their annual allotment of practical goods. Who got what was determined by the status of the worker and his relative family size, with spun cloth, leather goods, durable food supplies, tools, and whatnot being handed out. Under this explanation, there was nothing voluntary about this transaction; the lord of the manor was obligated to supply these goods. The items were chucked into boxes, one box for each family, to make carrying away the results of this annual restocking easier; thus, the day came to be known as "Boxing Day."

Many years ago, on the day after Christmas, servants in Britain carried boxes to their masters when they arrived for the day's work. It was a tradition that on this day all employers would put coins in the boxes as a special end-of-the-year gift. In a closely-related version of this explanation, apprentices and servants would on that day get to smash open small earthenware boxes left for them by their masters. These boxes would house small sums of money specifically left for them.

Most Canadians probably couldn't tell you where "Boxing Day"came from either. We're just happy to have it off as a stat holiday.

We exchange gifts on boxing day (by taking them back to the store and getting what we really want)

My daughter made a guess that it had something to do with the boxes that presents are placed in for gifts. Turns out she was not to far from wrong. I bet I am not the only American that was clueless about that term.

We exchange gifts on boxing day (by taking them back to the store and getting what we really want)

:rotfl: Plus all the best sales are on Boxing Day, and it's another public holiday, so more penalty rates. Between Christmas, Boxing Day and New Year's Eve being on the weekend (double time and a half) it was a very happy new year for me :)

We exchange gifts on boxing day (by taking them back to the store and getting what we really want)

:rotfl: Yup!

(hey..I'm almost at 1000 posts!)