December 26 not only marks the beginning of Kwanzaa, but is also Boxing Day. “What is Boxing Day?” you may ask. Well, if you are a resident of the United States, you probably don’t give a shit. But if your country was at one time under British-rule (that’s right, I wrote it), you probably have heard of Boxing Day or it at least shows up on your calendar as a possible holiday.

Does Boxing Day have something to do with the sport of boxing? A holiday in honor of the vagina? Possibly associated with moving or relocating? A day to trash/recycle/burn all the boxes from Christmas? All wrong. Enough of the historical inaccuracies, time to quote Wikipedia:

Boxing Day is a public holiday celebrated in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia and many other members of the Commonwealth of Nations on December 26, the day after Christmas Day. Boxing Day is a traditional celebration, dating back to the Middle Ages, and consisted of the practice of giving out gifts to employees, the poor, or to people in a lower social class. The name has numerous folk etymologies; the Oxford English Dictionary attributes it to the Christmas box; the verb box meaning: “To give a Christmas-box; whence boxing-day.”

Effing sweet! Although this holiday may seem inferior because it’s celebrated by America’s hat, I think this is something the U.S. definitely needs to adopt (like Elian Gonzalez). Maybe I’m saying this out of frustration as one of five people in the office today (bullshit!), and agree that Christmas should be surrounded by days off before and after, but also because the “practice of giving out gifts to employees” has a nice ring to it. The least my boss could do is throw me a gift card or a free lunch for holding down the fort while she sleeps-in, shops, goes ice-skating, gets hammered, etc.

In honor of Boxing Day, I’m leaving work right now! Happy Boxing Day to all!