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Boxing Day
...The first week-day after Christmas-day, observed as a holiday on which post-men, errand-boys, and servants of various kinds expect to receive a Christmas-box. This custom is linked to an older English tradition: since they would have to wait on their masters on Christmas Day, the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses and sometimes leftover food.
Boxing Day is a holiday traditionally celebrated the day following Christmas Day, when servants and tradesmen would receive gifts, known as a "Christmas box", from their masters, employers or customers, in the United Kingdom, Barbados, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, Bermuda, New Zealand, Kenya, South Africa, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and other former British colonies. Today, Boxing Day is a public holiday usually falling on 26 December.
In South Africa, Boxing Day was renamed Day of Goodwill in 1994. In the Roman Catholic Church's liturgical calendar, the day is dedicated to St. Stephen, so is known as St. Stephen's Day to Catholics, and to the population generally in Italy, Ireland, Finland, Alsace and Moselle in France. It is also known as both St. Stephen's Day and the Day of the Wren or Wren's Day in Ireland. In some European countries, most notably Germany, Poland, Belgium, the Netherlands and those in Scandinavia, 26 December is celebrated as the Second Christmas Day.
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