| America once again neglects the pleasures of Boxing Day
FOOTNOTE Last update: 25 December 2003 |
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Yes,
I work today. No wassailing. No time to look up just what "wassailing"
means, but it does sound like something that absolutely must be done
today. No going back to the store for returns or corrective shopping. No
rationing out the last of the soybean based near-eggnog that was so hard
to find this year. No dramatic readings of multilingual instruction and
assembly booklets.
This is America, home of the 24/7 work cycle. We don't do Boxing Day,
Stephenstide or whatever else the rest of the English-speaking world calls
this day when they stay home. Most Americans are either working today or
trying hard to look as though they are.
According to the Bureau of National Affairs survey of human resources
departments and employee relations executives, only one out of three
businesses give paid time off today. A big jump from only 10 percent last
year, something that business publications group attributed to Christmas
falling on a Thursday this year. The work week already is doomed, so why
not just give in to it?
I am a big advocate of Boxing Day. This is mostly on the belief that we
spend entirely too much time building up to the holidays only to rush them
out the door as soon as the last present is opened.
Boxing Day gives the kind of fadeout and reward we need. A time when
kids have not yet lost interest in toys, yet are no longer bouncing off
the wall with expectation. When there're still enough leftovers to avoid
making meals. When computer games have not yet been figured out. When
there's still enough holiday left to make up for any omissions the day
before.
It is a day of first chapters of books. For the cautious first listen
to CDs you may or may not turn out to like. A day and a night for the
simple driver installation that is certain to allow Windows and your
existing home computer to accept a new program from under the tree. A day
for calls to product support at the distant ends of the globe.
And no, this solicitousness does not extend to employees of the United
States Postal Service or UPS. That's because Christmas cards and parcels
delivered on Boxing Day are not to be considered late. No they aren't.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every 25th of December!" was
Ebenezer Scrooges response to one day off a year. The 26th should be
another excuse.
We need it for a consumer-driven economic expansion. We need it to
create jobs and kick in overtime pay.
We need it to educate ourselves on consumer electronics that are too
complicated to understand and work within only one day.
We need it because our commercial culture, by building awareness of the
holidays since Halloween, has created expectations that are unrealistic
and maybe unrealizable within a 24 hour period.
We need it because the day itself often is mined with the obligations
of extended family, ex-spouses, churches, gratuitous cooking and the
bullying of young people necessary to produce the sort of holiday
photography that will allow them to look back on this happy time. Only on
the 26th does an adult have any time to savor the less stressful aspects
of the holidays.
We need it because unlike in "A Christmas Carol," the spirits often
fail to do their work in one night.
Reason enough to pick a man's pocket two times a year. Next year, it
will fall on Sunday, and you'll see what I mean.
In the meantime, I'll look busy and sneak out early by the back door --
another Boxing Day tradition.
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