The origins of the day are uncertain – is it when wealthy gave their servants a box of gifts and a day off to enjoy them after a busy Christmas season? Churches placing boxes outside to collect money for the less fortunate? – but it’s pretty clear that Boxing Day has become one of society’s few purely secular holidays.
Now the fact that it *has* become about unbridled consumerism and capitalism instead is a totally different discussion… 🙁
Christmas is usually one of my favourite holidays of the year. But this year has just felt heavy and blue.
Which somehow got me thinking of the first time I heard of “Blue Christmas” (in the church context as opposed to the Elvis context) a few years ago from an Anglican priest I know.
He was delivering a Blue Christmas service in the lead-up to Christmas and explained to me how it was a way his church tried to reach people who didn’t find Christmas joyous because they were grieving or had bad memories of Christmas or whatever.
I remember thinking “That’s a great idea. So nice religious people have that available.”
There were a number of videos I dipped into and though none of them were enough to make me feel like I had to race out to rejoin the United Church of my youth, they did touch me a way I didn’t expect.