Boxing Day dates back to the Middle Ages. Workers showed up at the manors and estates to receive hand-outs from their English overlords.
In those early times the money was placed in a clay pot containing the year’s bonuses and in recent capitalist times the boxclay pot containing the year’s tips, which were doled out on December 26 as the year’s bonus to the workers, however whenever I asked Brits about Boxing Day’s origins they say it’s the day after Christmas on which nothing is open.
This is a fact, for I traveled from Portsmouth to London on Boxing Day 1985. The single 2nd Class train car was shared by me and five National Front lager louts. The ride had all the making of a combination of zombie film 28 DAYS LATER and the Jam’s hit DOWN IN THE TUBE AT MIDNIGHT.
Desolation. Rain. Drunks. Violence.
I first felt a fist, and then a kick
I could now smell their breath
They smelt of pubs and wormwood scrubs
And too many right wing meetings
My life swam around me
It took a look and drowned me in its own existence
The smell of brown leather
It blended in with the weather
It filled my eyes, ears, nose and mouth
It blocked all my senses
Couldnt see, hear, speak any longer
And Im down in the tube station at midnight
I said I was down in the tube station at midnight – THE JAM
Luckily on my Boxing Day the skinheads only rode two stops up the line.
On Boxing Day 2006 I was less fortunate and an altercation on my soi earned me a set of Panda eyes.
To see The Jam – Down In The Tube Station At Midnight, please go to this UR