WHILE YOU WERE SHOPPING
For many of us, Boxing Day means malls, mobs and deals. For Toronto Star food writer Karon Liu, the day has an entirely different meaning
For many, Boxing Day means sleeping in and microwaving leftovers.
For bargain hunters, the holiday means getting up early to score deals on TVs and computers.
For mall workers, it’s the dreaded day when hordes of shoppers descend on stores like locusts.
But at my house, Dec. 26 meant something else. Back when my sister and I were children, Boxing Day was the day our family opened our Christmas gifts.
That’s right. We opened our presents on Boxing Day, not Christmas Day.
My parents had immigrated to Canada from Hong Kong and in my mom’s mind, Boxing Day was a day named after boxes. As in, the boxes your presents came in. Ergo, Boxing Day was for opening presents.
“But Mom!” my sister and I would protest. “The kids on TV opened their pre- sents on Christmas morning!”
“Then why would they call it Boxing Day?” our mom would reason.
She had us there: my sister and I couldn’t think of an answer. The best thing I could come up with was the near fisticuffs people would get into during Boxing Day sales at the mall.
A quick Google search reveals that Boxing Day does have a deeper meaning than discounts on whatever merchandise stores couldn’t get rid of the first time around.
Back in the early 19th century, employers in Commonwealth nations would give presents and money to servants and tradespeople on the 26th as a thank-you for their service over the previous year.
I would joke about Mom treating my sister and me like maids, but we never did the dishes or made our beds, so we didn’t deserve presents.
“But Mom! The kids on TV opened their presents on Christmas morning!”
But by the time I was 7 or 8 my mom did relax her rules a bit. She would get us little stocking stuffers — chocolates, stationery, little toys — that we could open on Christmas Day to stop us from pulling our hair out because we had to wait the extra day.
To this day I admire her conviction: She would rather spend extra money on warm-up gifts than go against the sanctity of Boxing Day. I never asked why she was so hell-bent on this, but I knew that on some level it was an attempt to make us fit in more with Canadian customs.
My family emigrated from Hong Kong to Toronto in 1987, just months after I was born and while my sister was in preschool. Waves of people left Hong Kong during those years, uncertain of what would happen when the territory was handed back to China in 1997 after 150 years of British rule. Mom and dad worked hard to ensure a bright future for us. She never bought new clothes for herself and wore them until they had holes so we could have new coats for school.
Dad took the bus and subway to and from work every day and never complained. They saved up so that each year my sister and I could have the full Christmas experience. Dad would freeze his fingers off putting up the lights outside, mom would spend hours huddled over the stove to put the big dinner together and we’d all get into a huff untangling the string of lights and trying not to stab each other while putting up the branches of the fake tree.
By the time I was in my early teens, my sister and I finally convinced mom that yes, presents are supposed to be opened on Christmas Day.
Both mom and dad have since retired and are now in their mid-60s. Dad’s knees aren’t what they used to be, so I’m the one putting up the Christmas tree. Mom has passed the holiday cooking duties over to me, but pokes her head into the kitchen from time to time to make sure I haven’t burned anything.
This year marks the 29th year our family has been in this country and I think we’ve got the nuances of Christmas down — the Hallmark version of it anyway. We’ve perfected the turkey recipe, the tree now comes pre-lit, the ornaments strictly fall under the gold, red and bronze colour scheme and the presents are opened right after Christmas dinner.
It’s a little sad that my 4-year-old niece Madeline won’t get to experience the wonderfully misguided Christmas that her grandparents created.
I make fun of it, but I am forever grateful for the traditions my parents tried to create for us. They moved here to give us the gift of a better life, and that’s a present we didn’t have to wait till Boxing Day to open. karonliu@thestar.ca