There’s no greater escape from the din and hysteria of modernity than the serene magic of a Boxing Day walk

It is soothing, timeless and universal, it was founded by good King Wenceslas – or, perhaps, in fairness, ‘Yonder peasant’ – and more British people go out for a stroll on this day than any other.

In Ireland, it’s St Stephen’s Day, but to us it is Boxing Day – and specifically, the Boxing Day walk, when most of us will tug on a coat and venture forth for a bit of fresh air, unless the weather is truly frightful.

It has much to commend it. For one, after weeks of horrifically busy shops and, in recent days, queues down supermarket aisles, the Boxing Day amble costs not a penny.

For another, Boxing Day itself is mercifully unstructured and serene after all the rigidity of Christmas proper – the cards that had to be sent, the presents that had to be wrapped, the cooking of turkey and all the trimmings (which requires timings of almost military precision and much anxiety about hob space) and the desperate strain for perfection, often amidst relatives we seldom see and in an atmosphere enlivened, if not indeed inflamed, by much chocolate and alcohol.

to say nothing of the hallowed little family rituals most of us have – like the Highland parents I knew who insisted on seating their daughter and son on the carpet and pouring a tin of Rose’s chocolates all over them. ‘I wouldn’t mind so much,’ the lad complained afterwards, one Yule, ‘but, you know, I’m 22…’

On Boxing Day, no one expects or demands anything and, with a house full of food, few of us need even to cook. the quiet terrors of Christmas are past, its perils, culinary and otherwise, safely negotiated.

We may now hang loose, freewheel, do whatever we like – free of the least obligation to attend church, pull crackers, wear a silly jumper, check in dutifully with the Queen or assure your mother-in-law her

Christmas cake is the best ever when, really, it isn’t.

Boxing Day walks are not about achievement or compensation. We do them for the best reason there can be for doing anything: for that desire – like a quiet note in the middle of being – so often muffled by the nonsense and noise of modernity. We walk for simple and innocent pleasure.

And it will be especially sweet this year after months – one might even say years – of British politics at unprecedented hysteria, climaxing in a Christmas election with so much at stake that yon BBC exit poll was as nightmarishly anticipated as your Highers results.

Now, despite Nicola Sturgeon’s best efforts, we can all forget about state affairs for a bit and enjoy friends, family, and the turn of the year.

Creation

And, of course, the walk. there really have to be woods. Ideally, there would be snow, or at least a good riming of frost, cold enough for grass and fallen leaves to crunch beneath your feet and for your breath to smoke in the air.

It is particularly special in midwinter because Creation is asleep. the trees stand high and bare. Birds are too busy searching for grub to sing much. With so much inert and withered, you see the bare bones of the place; the hard exoskeleton of your park or grove or riverside.

there is little to distract you save the rhythm of your boots or the swing of your arms. Some of our best ideas – or sweetest conversations – come in this No Man’s Land of the year.

And, out walking on this day, there is a real and perceived lifting of spirits – and not just because today we are under not the least pressure to prepare roast potatoes (perfect, of course) but because our mind and body sense, if perhaps subconsciously, the lengthening at last of the day: the rally, and turning, of the unconquerable sun.

Even animals know it. In the last week or so before the midwinter solstice, my dogs are always just a little glum. When I kept hens, by Christmas Day they would all suddenly begin laying, after weeks of meagre product – and most of us in the past month, even in our great Scottish cities, will have been startled by distant honking; looked skywards to skeins of determined wild geese on their way to a balmier south.

Perhaps you will not see them today but, even in bleak midwinter, there is always something going on in the forest or on the water.

Last Saturday, at Craiglockhart in Edinburgh, I saw two proud and snowy swans lightly supervising their fastmaturing cygnets, as children scattered sweetcorn to them.

One snowy day, I heard a tap-tapping overhead and beheld an industrious woodpecker; on another, as I climbed a steep bank, a little vole ambled by, quite unafraid, but with urgent business evidently in hand.

And, early last year, as I stared in a sort of horrified relish, I saw a heron kill a large rat in the Braid Burn (with stark economy, simply holding it under water and counting to a thousand, as it were, very slowly).

King Lear was first performed on Boxing Day. Gilbert and Sullivan also first collaborated on December 26. Jimi Hendrix was inspired to write Purple Haze (backstage, at the Upper Cut Club in London) on this day in 1966. In 1998, much of southern Scotland endured an unprecedented storm and, six years later, some 230,000 people perished in the infamous Boxing Day tsunami.

there was once good reason for walking. In custom born in the tenth century, the Feast of Stephen was when the rich and powerful gave good things to their servants and tenants – or, into the early modern era, would at least throw a feast for them.

So off you would gratefully pad, miles if need be, to doff your cap at the Big House and get something nice in a box – and to this day most of us like to give a tip around this season to Postie, or the paperboy or indeed the binmen.

In much of rural Ireland, St Stephen’s Day sees something of much more evidently pagan origins – the Wren Hunt, when youths don masks, eccentric old clothing and much shaggy straw, and go from house to house with a load of holly hoisted on a pole – topped by a fake wren.

Cathedral

‘A penny or two would do it no harm,’ they chant, and the funds raised subsequently pays for a ‘Wren Dance’ in early January, or at least all the whiskey and Guinness knocked back at it.

And – just now and then – great things happen on a Boxing Day walk. In December 1132, monks of St Mary’s Abbey, York, spent a rather downbeat Christmas at Ripon Cathedral, increasingly disillusioned with the low spirituality and materialism of city life.

then, on Boxing Day, they went on a long hike up the Skell Valley – then fabulously remote and unspoiled – and were so moved by its serenity, its groves and dales, that they resolved to build something very special there – a new monastery, where faith and Creation would meet as one.

today, Fountains Abbey is among the largest and best preserved Cistercian foundations in the British Isles – a World Heritage site, in the care of the National trust, visited by hundreds of thousands every year and a popular film location.

And all because of a Boxing Day walk.