It’s a nice gesture and I’ve been happy to follow the trend. I’ve given the servants the day off and boxes of food scraps left over from Christmas dinner. Well, it’s the thought which counts, isn’t it?
However, the likelihood of a tradesperson calling in on Boxing Day is pretty remote. They never come on the right day during the rest of the year, so why start now?
When I told the plumber to come back on Boxing Day for his payment he laughed and suggested cash in the hand right away before he accidentally undid the tricky repair he’d done on the water pipes. So much for the Christmas spirit.
Back in 1663, diarist Samuel Pepys mentioned the custom of giving tradesmen a "box" of money or presents the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service but gift-giving on Boxing Day doesn’t happen now. Instead, Boxing Day is a sacred time for retailers and sometimes it’s the best trading day of the year.
Some claim that these sales are a fairly recent American (naturally) invention but they have a very long history as the Retailers’ Association website reveals.
It seems they started more than 2000 years ago, right after the first Christmas Day.
A young couple with a new baby were given gifts by some old codgers who were passing by. They gave the couple some gold, some frankincense and some myrrh.
The gold, of course, was much appreciated and could easily be sold to pay for useful things like disposable nappies or a Plunket-approved car seat. But myrrh! And frankincense! Myrrh was useful in anointing dead bodies and frankincense was always handy when making soap or perfume but they were not what the couple really needed, so they held the first Boxing Day sale and got rid of the stuff.
Thankfully, I’m never obliged to go into shops so my placid existence is not disturbed by attending a Boxing Day sale. They sound awful. Shops open really early but, even then, long queues will have formed, sometimes controlled by security guards (so far, unarmed) who let in only so many shoppers at a time. Sometimes spielers patrol the queue, sharing details of the treasures to be found at unbelievable prices inside. It all smacks of the Soho barker shouting the odds — "Beautiful Girls! Naked! Come In!" You know the sort of thing.
Naked women are not the attraction on Boxing Day. The retailers have more cunning plans. The come-on is often a hugely-discounted item, like a $399 frying pan for just $10! "While stocks last!" The frying pans (there were only two) disappear within minutes but, as you’re in the shop, why not splash out on the $499 talking Santa, ready for next Christmas.
A Canadian friend tells me that in some parts of her country, shops are not permitted to open on Boxing Day but, determined to make a bob while they can, those shops hold their Boxing Day sales on December 27.
It all may be pretty harmless. The buzz of joining jostling crowds and perhaps finding something you actually needed at a knockdown price gives a warm glow which possibly cools a little when you get home and realise you didn’t need an 86-inch third television set. The genuine tragedies are found among those who, just before Christmas, bought a $599 deep freeze with a built-in ice cube maker now on sale for $149 in the Boxing Day clearout.
The days after Christmas are also made busier for shops when customers arrive with exchange cards and negotiate handing in the battery-operated nasal hair remover they got from Aunty Jill and replacing it with a musical popcorn maker which is what they really wanted.
Inevitably, of course, the nasal hair remover and the popcorn maker will end up at a garage sale, perhaps even at Patearoa’s famous Crockery Bob’s sale.
I’ve been going to Crockery Bob’s sale for over 20 years now and some of the Christmas presents donated to the sale have become old friends. There’s the framed picture of a dusky maiden with a flower in her hair which was given to old Frank Lucknow in 2005. It pops up at Crockery Bob’s about every second year and has made an estimated $325 for the community funds.
It’s probably too late to urge you to give the Boxing Day sales a miss, but you have plenty of time to get to Patearoa for Crockery Bob’s. It’s on from 10am on January 3. See you there and I’ll keep the painting of the dusky maiden to one side. For you, just $1.
— Jim Sullivan is a Patearoa writer.
