To this day, I can remember my first December 26th in the United States. It wasn’t just the day after spending Christmas Day at home for the first time since moving, it was also the first time I fully realized what it meant that Americans don’t do Boxing Day… a realization I came to by the fact that I found myself on a bus to work at 7am that morning, appalled and incensed at the injustice that Americans were somehow expected to just go straight back to work the day after Christmas.
As someone who’d spent more than a quarter century in the UK to that point, I understood that Christmas isn’t a one-day thing. Even for those who don’t buy into the idea — like I do — that Christmas is really all about the build up to December 25th and the season as a whole as opposed to the presents and the food and all of that, there’s a general understanding that Christmas is at least a three day event: Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. You need a day after the one with the family and the presents and the food to recover; it’s entrely necessary, and suddenly, it didn’t exist anymore.
That day at work, I was sullen and sulky, there under unspoken protest. I remember so clearly that I wanted to silently go on strike because it felt inherently unfair that I was there in the first place, as if something had been taken from me by simply having to work, and feeling all too conscious of the fact that I could have taken the day off if only I’d thought to plan ahead. I was mad in the kind of scattershot, indiscriminate manner that means that I was actually mad at myself but unable to accept that, but looking back, a lot of me still thinks, sure, but in the defense of past me, why the fuck are offices open on the day after Christmas?
I’ve learned my lesson since then, and if you’re reading this when it goes live, I’m very purposefully not working. I hope your Christmas was/is a good one, if you celebrate, and if you don’t, I hope everyone has at least left you alone enough with the holiday cheer that you don’t resent it the way I resented working those many years ago.