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Once upon a time, a very long time ago, I wrote a sermon that had quite the half-life on the interwebs. I saw it was, for a time, referenced all around the globe.<\/p>\n
It was written while I served our Valley Unitarian Universalist Church<\/a> in Tempe, Arizona. I no longer recall the exact circumstances around the why of it, but I suspect that Sunday was the 26th, as the subject and title of the sermon was \u201cBoxing Day.\u201d<\/p>\n It appears there was so little easily available on the web related to Boxing Day that google searches would usually pop my sermon on the first page. I was told by the church\u2019s web manager it was the number one hit for a couple of years.<\/p>\n Looking back at it, I don\u2019t really think there was all that much of value in the sermon. I certainly only recall one good line, and it was a throw away. I announced the title to the staff, and our music director Kelly Walker asked what was Boxing Day, anyway? To which I said I didn\u2019t yet know. To which she said, \u201cOh, James, what if it turns out its the anniversary of the British forcing the Chinese to buy opium? Then what will you do?\u201d<\/p>\n Of course it isn\u2019t about the Boxer rebellion<\/a>, nor about pugilism, nor about getting rid of the boxes after Christmas.\u00a0Today\u00a0Wikipedia,<\/a>\u00a0Snopes<\/a>, and Youtube<\/a>\u00a0all explore the meanings of this holiday, also called St Stephen\u2019s Day in England.<\/p>\n In fact Boxing Day is a bit of a mystery even to those who observe it, and its exact beginnings are simply lost in the mists of time. Today it is a holiday in much of the former British Empire, it means most people get the day off from work. I guess it wasn\u2019t that big in England in the eighteenth century as it didn\u2019t become anything here on this side of the pond. The only certain thing about Boxing Day was that in the relatively recent past it was the time when you gave presents to your social inferiors. Your peers got their presents on or before Christmas. Where social superiors fit into this scheme I don\u2019t know\u2026<\/p>\n