Monday, December 26, 2011

Boxing Day Musings; Morning-after-Christmas practice

Happy Boxing Day! I hope your Christmas has been as restful as mine; more on mine in a little bit. So, just before I started writing this post, I got to wondering why the day after Christmas is called Boxing Day. When I was younger, my theory was that Boxing Day is so named because maybe people have so much energy after having so much fun and eating so much good food during the Christmas festivities that they had to burn off some of this excess energy by engaging each other in boxing matches.

Santa and his reindeer partaking in Boxing Day festivities
 [Image taken from here]

This theory is, of course, wrong. As I got a little older and became a little more sensible to the ways of the world, so to speak, I came up with another, more sensible theory. I theorized that Boxing Day is so named because when people wake up the day after Christmas, they are suddenly confronted by all this junk (most of which has no other use other than during Christmas) lying around; junk which is often bought with money they really don't have. Rather than let all this useless Christmas stuff lie around, they promptly started putting them into boxes, either to be stored for use next year or to be disposed of in some other way. Hence "Boxing Day."

Well, it turns out that neither of these theories are right. According to Wikipedia, that all-seeing, all-knowing digital oracle of our cyber age (Ode to Wikipedia: "Oh Hail, Thou exalted digi-brain that is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, How benighted and conditioned by extreme ignorance my existence would be without thy grace; Grant me now the power of your Wikified glory!"), the correct explanation of Boxing Day is as follows: 


"Boxing Day is traditionally a day following Christmas when wealthy people in the United Kingdom would give a box containing a gift to their servants."

Sigh... what would I do without Wikipedia, this instant dispeller of ignorance?

In any case, since I am neither wealthy, nor do I live in the United Kingdom, nor are you my servants, I shall have no gift-laden boxes to give you :-) (But if you do live in the United Kingdom and are wealthy, please get in touch with me right away; I might consider becoming your servant :-)).

*************

Although I have no gifts for you, I will still (hopefully) regale you with a brief account of my Christmas Day (mis)adventures. Yesterday, I went with a couple of colleagues and their family members to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. It was alright. Never been a big Sherlock Holmes fan. But I really think that Robert Downey Jr. is a good actor.

After the movie, one of my colleagues hosted Christmas dinner at his place, and invited us over to partake of the festivities. I definitely had too much to drink (a few glasses of red wine, a couple of margaritas, and a shot of Scotch). And I definitely felt it the next morning. I didn't have a hangover, but between the time I woke up to do my Buddhist prayers and the time I made it to the mat for practice, I had to go to the bathroom to move my bowels three times to get rid of whatever it was that was moving around in my system (TMI? My apologies...). Curious. Could it be that excessive alcohol has a delayed laxative effect on me? Or could it be that knowing that it is about to start practice, my body put itself into auto-detox mode? Whatever the case might be, it seemed to work: Practice this morning, when it finally got started after all these trips to the bathroom, was quite smooth. Did full primary and second up to Ardha Matsyendrasana, and everything went quite nicely. I'm not going to bore you with the blow-by-blow details of the practice, so I guess I'll sign off here. Happy Boxing Day!   

4 comments:

  1. Hello I liked your site and your site shiamovnebit User

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  2. Oh dear, you can do three margaritas and scotch and NOT have a hangover? gee! you have some alcohol tolerance, I think I'd die! good to hear the Sherlok Holmes was OK... might watch it then, I have it at home and have not popped it on the DVD yet... I also like Jr as an actor

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  3. Hello Claudia,
    yes, I survived a considerable amount of alcohol poisoning :-) I hope your Christmas was enjoyable and restful.

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