Tag: boxing day

2167: Boxing Day

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Today was Boxing Day, apparently a day when everyone and his dog decides to go shopping, because having a single day of the year when you can’t go shopping is apparently too much for some people to deal with.

While I certainly don’t begrudge people the business they have brought my place of work over the festive period, since they keep me in a job for the time being, I do find myself a little bewildered at the eagerness to get right back out into an absolutely rammed town centre and do something it’s possible to do almost every single other day of the year.

I guess it’s the promise of “sales” that has people enraptured with the idea of immediate post-Christmas shopping: the prospect of being able to pick up a bargain with any money and/or vouchers that came their way to celebrate the anniversary of the birth of our Lord, but looking around town today I can’t honestly say that I saw anything I’d particularly regard as a “bargain”. Sure, some stuff was maybe a little bit cheaper than it is usually, but we’re talking a reduction of like 20-25% at most in many places, which doesn’t amount to all that much.

Mostly the thing that bewilders me about immediate post-Christmas shopping is the fact that people are willingly giving up time where it’s absolutely fine — even encouraged — to slob around at home doing nothing of any consequence save for eating, drinking and playing with toys, and instead spending money they probably don’t really have on things they’re not sure they want, perhaps for people they don’t really like.

Oh well. As I say, I certainly don’t begrudge these people their choices, since the amount of money we took today — a lot of it cash, too, making for some impressive wads in the tills — is proof enough that online hasn’t quite killed the high street just yet, and it’s keeping me in employment for the moment, and hopefully for a bit longer after the holiday season is officially over. That last bit remains to be seen, so fingers crossed.

As for me, though, I don’t plan on doing any shopping anywhere other than Steam over the next few days, and I don’t have to get off the sofa to do that. I have two days off now, so I will most certainly be doing as little as possible over the course of the next 48 hours to ensure I’m rested, relaxed and ready for action as we creep towards the new year.

I hope you all had a thoroughly pleasant Christmas, and that you’re having the chance to enjoy at least a bit of a rest over the holiday period.

#oneaday, Day 343: Boxing Day

Christmas is over for another year, and so here we are on Boxing Day (or actually the day after if you’re operating on UK time)—a day which apparently isn’t particularly well-known in the US. In all honesty, it’s not particularly well-known in the UK, either, aside from the name. It’s just “the day after Christmas”.

There’s plenty of things that can be done on Boxing Day, and they tend to vary according to your age.

If you’re a young kid, Boxing Day is a day to spend playing with all the presents you got and suffering from some pretty severe analysis paralysis while you work out what to do next. When you have the amount of choice most kids get these days after receiving a veritable truckload of presents, it’s easy to see how they might get overwhelmed with things to choose from.

If you’re a bit older, Boxing Day is probably a day for a hangover, whether it be caused by excess of alcohol, excess of food or, more likely, both. It also marks the beginning of The Great Leftovers Season, by the end of which you will never, ever want to see turkey ever again, whether it’s on a plate with potatoes and gravy, stuffed into a sandwich, made into a curry or whatever vaguely inventive ways you’ve come up with to use turkey. Turkey is, of course, a meat which barely gets eaten throughout the rest of the year. Is this because it’s just like an enormous dry chicken? Or is it because we eat so much of it throughout the holiday season that no-one can bear the thought of eating it again at any point in the rest of the year?

It’s a pretty universal constant whatever your age, though, that the day after Christmas is for resting, sleeping, lolling on the couch (the original meaning of lolling, not the Internet meaning) and watching the DVDs that were inevitably in your Christmas stockings.

There’s an exception, though: households which got a Wii or Kinect for Christmas. The Wii and Kinect get people up and about a little bit more than they would otherwise be, since they’re popular gifts with kids and adults alike, and they require that you get off your turkey-filled ass and jump around. Quite literally in the case of Kinect.

Incidentally, if you are still a Kinect doubter, I defy you not to at least find the damn thing clever as hell. Yesterday we were trying it out and didn’t have enough space to play with two people on Kinect Adventures, so we moved the couch back a bit. By the time we’d turned back to the screen, the game was asking if we’d like to play two-player mode. Without us telling it. Witchcraft and sorcery!

Hope you’ve all had a suitably festive festive season and have some appropriately awesome plans for the new year. 2011 better not suck as much as 2010, though I recall saying something very similar at the end of 2009 so I’m not going to hold my breath until something actually awesome happens!