Member-only story
Consider Donating Old Clothing for Boxing Day
Read on to learn more, if you’re not British.
One of my guilty pleasures is reading historical romance novels.
Oh, look! I just lost all the male readers of this article! :) *waves*
I mainly prefer romance novels taking place in the English Regency and Victorian eras. Among them, I’ve read a few set during Christmas. One of the curious cultural habits in the Christmas romances is a weird tradition — I thought it was weird at age 16 — called Boxing Day.
I could not figure out what the heck Boxing Day was. It didn’t seem likely to me that Regency people went out and had a melee Red Hour session of Fight Club all across the country the day after Christmas. So I looked into it.
It turns out that Boxing Day, generally the day after Christmas, was when the aristocracy would give gifts to their servants and allow their servants a day to go home and spend with their families. Servants in wealthy households weren’t given Christmas Day itself off; as they were expected to serve their employers on that day.
It’s good to be the duke.
Gifts for the servants would typically be put into boxes that included food, money, and clothing. It was a tradition that ladies’ maids would receive an old dress belonging to the lady they worked…