Boxing Day

As you may or may not know, today is Boxing Day, a holiday of British origin, and celebrated there in in the UK, as well as such places as Canada and Australia. Being a fellow who likes to be in the spirit of the holidays, I called my good friend Clive, who is a gent of British origin living down in south these days. I wanted to wish him a Happy Boxing Day, and to remind him to keep his gloves up and his chin tucked in lest his lovely wife stretch him out with an uppercut. Clive patiently explained that Boxing Day isn't about pugilism, and besides that, the missus just got lucky last year.

"So what is Boxing Day?", I asked. And my education on the subject commenced.

Boxing Day, also known as St Stephen's Day, is the practice of giving goods or money to the more needy. How it got is name seems to be not quite so straight forward.

Theories abound, from alms being collected in the church poor box for distribution, to servants carrying empty boxes to work to be filled with money or a gift of goods from their masters as a sort of end of year bonus for good service. While some stories give the image of a class conscious society (apparently giving a return gift on Boxing Day was considered a statement of equality and not done), however the optimist in me prefers the image of charity towards those who really need it Call me sentimental, but I really do believe it was meant to be that way.

Thanking Clive for the enlightenment, I felt I owed him something for his trouble. So I shared with him the only useful information I had at that moment. "Keep your gloves up!"

It's the Thought That Counts

Well, I started this this around Halloween, and now it is Christmas. The similarities abound. Both are holidays that are anticipated, and primarily for, the children. And while Halloween is notable for ghost stories, Christmas is associated with one of the most famous and most often retold ghost stories. And despite the title of this blog, it is okay to read A Christmas Carol when you are home alone.

All to often, we get caught up in the gift giving, and worry more about the gift than about the thought. This is a story about how the thought really does count.

It was 1984, and as a young sailor, I had just reported to my ship, the USS Josephus Daniels, on the first of December. I was an incoming member of the sonar gang, and I had an opportunity to have a brief acquaintance with an outgoing member named Thomas C Ferry, better known as TC. He was scheduled to leave the ship in a day or two, and he was engaged in making a Christmas Tree out of whatever materials he had at hand, to give a little holiday cheer for his friends that he was leaving behind. As an additional gesture to his friends who would not be going home for Christmas, he left small wrapped gifts behind. My association with TC consisted of one or two very short conversations as he hurried through his preparations to go home, and inheriting his bunk when he left.

Fast forwarding to Christmas Day, I was on watch in Sonar Control that morning, and doing a fine job of feeling sorry for myself. It was my first Christmas away from home, and I was feeling quite alone. Everyone else had gone down to open the Christmas gifts left by TC. I had not really known him, so I was feeling left out by not having a present. But as I was relieved from the watch, and was heading down to Christmas dinner (one of two meals prepared on the ship that you would actually want to eat, the other being Thanksgiving dinner), my watch section supervisor asked me if I was going to go below and open my present. I was shocked! Even though he did not really know me,TC left me a present. I was not alone. I was one of the gang! The present consisted of a plastic container to hold my soap, and two Snickers bars. A small present, but it really was the thought that counted.

Please accept my wish for a happy and safe holiday season to my friends, and to readers of my blog.

The Tradition

Thanksgiving traditions...everybody has them. They are wide ranging, from Thanksgiving pageants to the brand of whip cream that goes on the pumpkin pie. Well I have one too, and it is one that I am happy to share with my brother-in-law, Ralph, and am trying to pass on to my nephews. The traditional Thanksgiving Day Nap!

It was a tradition started in the carefree days of my youth, back when I had no clean up responsibilities, and dirty dishes were not my concern. A nap was just there for the taking. But I am older, if not wiser, now, and sometimes there is cleanup to be done. Sometimes, with the aid of Ralph, we can dodge than clean up bullet, and go straight to that blissful, turkey induced rest. Sometimes, though, all the charm in the world isn't enough, and we have to do the needful. But we know that every dish cleared from the table and every pot scrubbed clean is one step closer to the sofa, where we will settle in to "watch a movie with the kids".

I hope you all enjoy your traditions as much as I enjoy mine. Happy Thanksgiving, and remember to take the time to be thankful for what you have, and worry less about what you don't.

Take a Deep Breath

And today is the day of the ever popular New York Marathon. The weather looks good, although a bit on the chilly side. But I believe that will affect the cheering masses more than the runners. If you have never been a spectator for this event, it is quite a day in the City. I have gone when I have known people running in the event, but I will always cheer for anyone who took the trouble to write their name on their shirt. This is a practice I encourage, since you never know when a cheer from the crowd, no matter how small, can give a person that little bit extra they needed to keep going. It is sort of the random act of kindness that we would like to practice in our everyday lives, but always seem to need a special occasion to do it.

Now I have always felt twenty-six miles seems like sort of an odd number of miles to throw into a race. Why not a nice rounded number like twenty or thirty (hey, you just ran twenty six, what's four more)? Here is where the tradition of the ancient Greeks steps in, and where the name of the race comes from (for all of you who thought the marathon was named after a candy bar). Around 490 BC, King Darius of Persia had a burning need to show those upstarty little Greeks (Athenians to clarify, since Greece wasn't really a unified country then) who was the boss of them. So he has his generals land his troops on a beach near the Plain of Marathon, where they found a smaller, and very much unexpected, Athenian force awaiting them. The Athenians launched a surprise frontal assault, sending the Persians packing. Knowing that the people of Athens were waiting for news of the battle, a runner named Pheidippides was selected to make the run from Marathon to Athens, a distance which tradition lists as twenty six miles. Pheidippides runs into Athens, proclaims "We are victorious", and drops dead on the spot.

The moral here is cooling down is every bit as important as warming up. If Pheidippides had taken a deep breath of two, and walked it off a little before proclaiming anything, he may have enjoyed quite the hero's welcome. Just a little bit of helpful advice to all my friends who enjoy a little twenty six mile run.

Never Read Ghost Stories When You Are Home Alone

Somethings you think would just go without saying, but it never really works out that way. Being the season for Halloween, I picked up a book of short ghost stories, which turned out to be a whole lot better written than initially anticipated. Of course I read a few right before bed. One eye opening nightmare later, and I am awake at two AM regretting my bed time reading choice.

It was a bit reminiscent of my youth, when my parents would go out on a Saturday Evening, and my sister and I would wind up in the basement watching Chiller Theater. My father, with his "interesting" sense of humor, would upon my parents return home, sneak around to the side of the house where there was a window from which he would have a view of the TV and the back of our heads. At just the right moment (timing is everything you know), he would rap on the window real hard, and watch my sister and I shoot for the ceiling. We never learned, and he never got tired of the joke.

Anyway, for a good Halloween read, I recommend "The Judge's House" by Bram Stoker, but not when you are home alone, and definitely not before bed time.