Boxing Day & St Stephens Day December 26th

On the second day of Christmas
my true love sent to me:
2 Turtle Doves
and a Partridge in a Pear Tree

Feast Day of St Stephens

Sorry, this post is out of order. But I typed the date in wrong so you didn’t get it on Boxing Day.

It is the Feast day of St Stephen. He was the first Christian Martyr and was stoned to death not long after Jesus’ apotheosis. He was a deacon in the early Church, brought before the Sanhedrin for blasphemy. At the trial, he made a long speech outraging the audience. St Paul was in the audience (aka Saul).

Stephen attacked the importance of the Temple to Judaism, making parallels with idolatry. Perhaps, I wonder, this explains why there are so few early Christian Churches identified in the archaeological record? Were they consciously avoiding large Temple Basilican structures to differentiate themselves from pagan religions?

Wrens & Presents

The 26th is the day when Wrens could be hunted. Read my post about Robins and Wrens and their seasonal importance here. Also, the day, people gave presents (Boxes) to servants and working people. Other days for presents included St Nicholas’s Day (December 6th), Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day, and Twelfth Night.

St Stephens Walbrook

Wren’s most beautiful Parish Church is dedicated to St Stephen. It is one of the first Parish Churches to have a dome. It also has a splendid Altar designed by Henry Moore. I took a Swedish Choir around the City of London on a guided walk. St Stephen’s was open, and, once inside, they just fancied the acoustics. So, they sang. I recorded. Listen below:

If you wish to read the post on St Lucy click here:

Victorian Boxing Day

In 1858,James Ewing Richie wrote about ‘Boxing Night’ in ‘The Night Side of London’. I’ve mixed it up with another source. So here is a list of the people who might come knocking at the door for their traditional Boxing Day Box.

Richie’s advice was to tie up your knocker to avoid paying these people:

The Chimney sweep.  Then varlets playing French Horns pretending to be the Waits – {The Waits were licensed musical beggars}

Then came the Turncock, who switched the water supply to your side of the street on alternative days. Followed by the Postman, the Dustman; the Road Waterer in summer, and the Road Scrapper in Winter. After this, the real Waits turned up for a musical turn. Then the Lamplighter, the Grocer’s Boy and the Butcher’s Boy.

I imagine the Knocker-upper also got a Box. My grandmother told me about the knocker-upper in Old Street in the early Twentieth Century. He would tap on the window with his long stick to wake up those people without a reliable clock.

Richie records that he had to give a tip to 6 people who wished him a Happy Christmas on his way to work. The tip he gave was half a crown each. He thought his wife would be lucky to get away with a shilling per person for the trade men listed above. Strange that he gave more than twice as much to random strangers than his wife gave to people who served them all year. Perhaps this reflects his belief that the size of his tip reflected his position in society. It is all curmudgeonly. This is probably because he believed it would be spent on drink, leading to the miseries of drunkenness.

First Published on Dec 26th 2022, Republished December 2023, 2024

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