Christmas 2025 was another great one, spent overindulging in both food and drink with family (with one conspicuous absence).  Meteorologically, it may have been the best Christmas in Fecal Creek history.  Holy shit!  Truly violent storms on both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day…biblical thunder and lightning, lashing winds, multiple inches of rain, extensive flooding…it was beautiful.

But today, the goddamn sun is out, dear reader…the skies are clear.  And there’s nothing left to talk about the Day After.  The Great Hangover.  That weird, gray, interdimensional fart of a day squashed between the forced cheer of Christmas and the looming dread of New Year’s Eve.  I speak, of course, about December 26th, a day, according to my calendar, some of our more, shall we say, monarchically-inclined cousins across the pond have apparently christened “Boxing Day.”  I know this only because it pops up every year on my calendar with a parenthetical “UK” next to it, as if I’m supposed to know what it is and how to celebrate it.

I’ve traditionally ignored it, but this year, I’ve decided it was high time I figure this horseshit out.

I started with this fact: nobody in America knows what the hell Boxing Day is.  Not really.  Not in any way that would survive even the gentlest cross-examination by a bored customs agent or a half-sober pub historian.  At best we treat it like some cryptic British ritual involving foxes, tweed, and the ghost of Queen Victoria handing out coupons for discounted marmalade.  And yet – every December 26th – there it is on the calendar, staring at us like a smug, overfed cat.  Boxing Day.  A holiday that sounds, for my money, like a mid-tier UFC event sponsored by a failing energy drink.

Which is what I was hoping for as I began to dissect this calendric pustule.  Because taken at face value, the name itself suggests some sort of officially sanctioned, post-yuletide pugilism, which I could absolutely get behind.  A national holiday dedicated to settling familial scores that had been building up all year.  Maybe it involves bare-knuckle brawls in a parking lot behind a pub.  Or at least some quality fisticuffs after Uncle Tommy starts whining and bitching like some old lady about Republicans over the turkey carcass.  That would be the shit.  Uncle Randy made another crack about your “creative” career path?  Find.  To the ring.  Grandma Mildred weaponized her disapproval with a strategically gifted bathroom scale?  Lace up, Mildred, it’s time for the main event when you get your dentures knocked out of your octogenarian skull.  Hell yes.  A glorious, kingdom-wide festival of fights, with the King himself officiating from a gilded ringside seat, perhaps nodding sagely as a cousin gets a well-deserved right hook for snatching the last pig-in-a-blanket.

Yes, this I could get behind.  This has a certain raw, cathartic honesty to it.  It’s a vision of beautiful, state-sponsored chaos.

But no.  A quick and deeply disappointing dive into the digital muck reveals a truth far more mundane, more depressingly…British.  The theories are as limp as thirty-day-old tinsel.  One story claims it’s the day the landed gentry, their bellies swollen with swan and their hearts filled with microscopic drops of noblesse oblige, would box up their leftovers and gift them to the downstairs staff.  Here you go, Jeeves.  Enjoy this gnawed-on drumstick and a half-eaten terrine.  A spectacular display of generosity that I’m sure made up for a year of serfdom.

Another, equally soul-crushing theory suggests it’s about alms boxes in churches being opened and distributed to the poor.  Which, again, has a certain Dickensian charm if you’re into institutionalized pity.  But it lacks the unadulterated madness the name promises.

The modern reality, of course, is a monster of a different stripe entirely.  It’s a day of rabid, foam-mouthed consumerism.  A retail-driven bloodbath where otherwise sane people trample each other for 40% off a 73-inch television they don’t need.  It’s the Black Friday of the Commonwealth, a second, even more pathetic lap in the unending marathon of buying shit. We’ve just finished a holiday centered on the ritual of giving and receiving objects, and now, not even a full 24 hours later, we’re back in the trenches, wrestling a stranger for a discounted Nespresso machine.

It seems to be a holiday that feels like a symptom of a deeper sickness.  A cultural glitch.  An excuse to either A) do absolutely nothing, melting into the sofa like a forgotten cheese sculpture, watching sports and picking at the desiccated carcass of the Christmas feast, or B) participate in a full-scale assault on the local shopping mall.  There is no middle ground.  There is only sloth or savagery.

No.  This will not do.  I say we reclaim this hollowed-out husk of a holiday and give it some real American spirit.  Let’s create our own “American Boxing Day,” where the name isn’t just some quaint, dusty relic of classist charity.  No, our Boxing Day would be a glorious, nationwide catharsis.  The “Boxing” would be a mere vestigial nod to tradition, as we’d embrace all forms of glorious combat to settle our post-holiday grievances.  Did your brother-in-law burn the roast?  Settle it with a round of arm-wrestling.  Neighbor’s inflatable snowman still blinking obnoxiously?  Challenge him to a duel, swords or pistols, his choice.  From organized jousting tournaments in suburban cul-de-sacs and martial arts showdowns in public parks to the satisfying finality of a disagreement resolved with Mac-10s, this would be a day for clearing the air.  It’s the American way: turning a confusing and stupid foreign custom into a spectacular, heavily-armed festival of personal expression.

N.P.: “Body Burn” – Cubinate