ASTEPBA IN TıME

When you stride out for your Boxing Day walk, you’re enjoying a Christmas tradition from the Middle Ages, says Ray Connolly

‘It’s crisp underfoot and our cheeks are pink with cold’

Will you be wrapping up in a scarf, coat and woolly hat and going on a Boxing Day walk this year? Hundreds of thousands of us will be. It’s a British tradition and, if you’re really into it, there are now published routes for all parts of the nation, from the Cairngorms to Cornwall.

I’ll pretend to hate it, but I’ll happily be dragged out along the Thames Path which, if it stays fine, will likely be as busy as a pedestrian motorway. Or perhaps we’ll wander around one of the bigger London parks, with countless other smiling families and their dogs.

That’s the thing about Boxing Day walks, as opposed, for instance, to fighting the mob at the sales. They are happy family outings. Everyone is smiling, buoyed by the spirit of Christmas. There’s no pushing and shoving, no hurr - ing, no irritation when child on the scooters they got Christmas momentar block the way. Before Chr mas it’s rush, rush, rush supermarkets are laid wa by worried, tired moth on whom the vast bur of festive preparati mainly falls. But Boxing Day, whe they’ve shopped for, b cooked for the rest of us, they are as serene as swans as they lead us off on our annual trek.

Some of us will complain about the cold, of course. I always do. But secretly I’ll be enjoying myself, forsaking my mobile phone and the football scores for a couple of hours for the spiritual satisfaction of knowing that I’m a link in a tradition that goes back to the Middle Ages. No one knows for sure when Boxing Day – and the Boxing Day walk – began, but my theory is that the two developed out of a combination of customs.

One was for local priests to open the poor box to distribute its collection to the neediest of the parish on St Stephen’s Day, 26 December. And the other was for the rich to give their servants a day off on that day, sending them home to their families with the remains of their Yuletide feasts – a sort of little Christmas box, if you like. In other words, they gave them a rare, non-religious holiday, on which, at a time when the nation was 99 per cent rural, people would walk miles to visit relatives in different villages.

Inevitably, entertainments such as horse racing developed on such days, when racegoers would tramp out into the country to get a good view of the runners and riders. There was fox hunting too, when the unhorsed would follow the hunt over hill and dale. Everyone was out walking on Boxing Day, not for work, for once, but for pure enjoyment. These days we go to see relatives, watch the racing or enjoy horse and hound meets in our cars, but we’ve retained the habit of walking in the countryside. So well done, Queen Victoria, for agreeing that Boxing Day should be a bank holiday in 1871.

Normally, many of us only like to walk during the balmier months, but late December has its own misty beauty, when we can wonder at the skeletons of leafless trees in the monochrome days of winter. And if it’s crisp underfoot and our cheeks are pink with cold, there’s nothing as tempting as a country pub with a roaring fire to call into along the way. It’s amazing how a strong drink fortifies the Christmas spirit.

As a young boy growing up in Lancashire over half a century ago, the Boxing Day walk was more of an escape than a pleasure for me, a couple of hours away from an afternoon of cups of tea, aunts and boiled ham. Only when I had children of my own did I fully understand the winter joy to be had. Then my wife Plum would dictate that everyone must get some fresh air, and off we’d set across the New Forest, the bracken brown and crackling as we walked, the wild ponies doleful in their winter coats. Now I thank the culture born in medieval times for bequeathing me the possibility of such happy memories.

Our only Christmas away from home was in New Zealand in 1977, where in our shorts and T-shirts we went for the sunniest of Boxing Day walks. It was scorching hot as we lugged our lunch from our hire car along miles of a vast, empty beach seeking the ideal spot for a picnic. We still had cold turkey, of course, washed down with New ealand sauvignon blanc, while the children and their Kiwi cousins sang Abba songs.

But not every Boxing Day has taken us out into the countryside or along stretches of burning sand. Boxing Day in 1976 wasn’t like that at all. For some reason everything went wrong that year. The children all had colds, the central heating broke down, the fairy lights on the tree had gone off and somehow I’d managed to pull the curtains in the sitting room down and couldn’t get them back up again.

The last straw was when we discovered the car battery was flat so we couldn’t, therefore, go and visit the family we’d been invited to see. ‘Never mind,’ I said in desperation. ‘Let’s all go to the pictures.’ And off we set. It didn’t help that our section of the London Underground wasn’t working as our little family made its long, glum Boxing Day walk through gloomy, rainswept streets, but we got there.

And then, as we sat in the darkness, a kind of miracle began to happen. As King Kong tenderly picked up Jessica Lange as Ann Darrow, the children’s faces lit up and the worst Christmas ever turned into one of the best. It was a long way home, as we talked non-stop about the film, but it’s a Boxing Day walk none of us has ever forgotten. n Visit rayconnolly.co.uk.

tivestroll.inse elow: Ray toda nd his wife Plu their childre