Boxing day, or more presciently, with regard to customer traffic, the boxing day riots in China would be a good metaphor for the hoped for hoofing of shoes, boots, snow shoes and mucklucks that could be used as hooves for the herds shopping on Boxing Day. The greed factor is not to be discounted and you wonder if the event is one day going to degenerate into a ransacking of a store and mob violence akin to what transpired in London last year. Face it, the reason Boxing Day exists is that the merchants need the fric to tide over expenses until the middle of January even if Santa and the reindeer lurch straight over the fiscal cliff…
(see link at end)…King Wenceslas didn’t start Boxing Day, but the Church of England might have. During Advent, Anglican parishes displayed a box into which churchgoers put their monetary donations. On the day after Christmas, the boxes were broken open and their contents distributed among the poor, thus giving rise to the term Boxing Day. Maybe….
Get ready to read them the Riot Act…
But wait: there’s another possible story about the holiday’s origin. The day after Christmas was also the traditional day on which the aristocracy distributed presents (boxes) to servants and employees — a sort of institutionalized Christmas-bonus party. The servants returned home, opened their boxes and had a second Christmas on what became known as Boxing Day.So which version is correct? Well, both. Or neither. No one, it seems, is really sure.Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1868711,00.html#ixzz2FWtleEdv
The other option, more in line with aggressive bargain snatchers, and perhaps with a vengeance against the consumer society is the Chinese legend of “Righteous and Harmonious Fists” also more commonly known as “farmer,s angst on steroids.” When they decided to give a shit-kicking to the Western merchant class…
—Boxer Rebellion (1900): Beginning in 1898, groups of peasants in northern China began to band together into a secret society known as I-ho ch’üan (“Righteous and Harmonious Fists”), called the “Boxers” by Western press. Members of the secret society practiced boxing and calisthenic rituals (hence the nickname, the “Boxers”) which they believed would make them impervious to bullets.—Read More:http://history1900s.about.com/od/1900s/qt/boxer.htm
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…The Boxer rebellion in China in 1900 has many interesting parallels to events in the early 21st century. It saw an uprising in a non-western country against what was seen as the corrupting influence of western practices and ideologies. In some respects a foretaste of the current war against terrorism, in that a basically grass roots organisation fought what they saw as a holy war against a technologically superior collection of foreign powers to preserve their values and beliefs.
—Was Godard so off-target when he made his hyperbolic remark in 1967 that “Lewis is the only one in Hollywood doing something different – the only one who’s making courageous films. He’s been able to do it because of his personal genius”? Certainly, Lewis’s films were radical departures from the other comedies of the day, especially in their free-form episodic structure, surrealist sensibility and metafilmic devices.—Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/feb/10/jerry-lewis-film-auteur
On one side of the rebellion were the so-called Boxers known as the I Ho Ch’uan or Righteous Harmonious Fists. This was originally a secret society that dated back before 1700 and whose origins are cloaked in myths and legends. What is clear is that in 1747 a group of Jesuits were expelled from China due to Boxer influence. A series of bad harvests, plagues, and harsh sanctions imposed by the Western powers and Japan (after the war of 1894-5) had caused much bad feeling. There was a growing fear that the Chinese would be reduced to servants of the western powers, into this environment the Boxers started preaching anti western beliefs. The Boxers saw anything Western as evil and practiced traditional martial arts and used Chinese weapons such as curved halberds and spears. All foreigners were 1st class devils and Chinese who had converted to Christianity were 2nd class devils, those who worked for the foreigners were 3rd class devils. The Boxers were very superstitious, believing in spells and magic that would mean they were immune to western bullets and such incantations would be used to create a trance like state among the followers. The Boxers were not above using printing presses to publish huge numbers of leaflets spreading their propaganda accusing the catholic church of abusing Chinese women and children. Read More:http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/wars_boxer.html
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