The traditional Boxing Day

It has been nice to celebrate "Boxing Day" or "The Feast of Stephen" in the traditional way.  Which, needless to say, has pre-Christian pagan origins.

The original Beaker People celebrated Boxing Day by traditional pursuits such as building massive boxes from wicker and daub*.  Why they did this is beyond us, but we like to think it was a prehistoric version of "cage fighting".  Our surmise is that they would put two of the rowdier Beaker Folk into the boxes and leave it to them to battle it out.  The winner would be named the "Stephen" as he would generally spend the rest of the day getting stoned.  It was a simpler time, before Christmas health warnings about binge drinking** and what to do with Turkey fat***.  In fact, there was no problem for the Beaker Folk because they had no turkeys.****
As time went by, this primitive Beaker ritual evolved into the sports we now know as boxing (hence the names), wrestling*****, and basketball.

So this year we shut Drayton Parslow and Burton Dasset into a large wicker hamper, and left them there while we went off down the White Horse.  By the time we got back, Burton's drivelling on about the Community's P&L (whatever that is) had driven Drayton so insane with boredom that he had gnawed his way through the wicker to escape.  Drayton's not too bad for the experience, except that he keeps finding bits of willow in his teeth.

We have of course also engaged in our other traditional Boxing Day activities.  The Boxing Day Hunt, for example.  It used to get round the ban on hunting with hounds by using a couple of wolves they borrowed from the Safari Park, but then the people at Woburn found out about it and banned hunting with wolves as well.  So now the Beaker Hunt ride around Aspley Heath on mountain bikes chased by Stacey Bushes.  Stacey puts a set of authentic vegetarian reindeer antlers on her head in an attempt to make herself look like Hern the Hunter.  And being a fit lass, she normally manages to catch one or other of the male Beaker Folk eventually.  Personally I think it's a cruel sport and ought to be banned like hunting with hounds.  But Stacey assures me that it's all natural, that it's a tradition in her part of Dorset, and that deep down the blokes she's chasing enjoy it, and feel no real pain.

* There's no archaeological evidence for this, but it seems like a reasonable guess.  None of the other explanations make much sense either.  Apart from the theory that people were so hung-over from their Solstice celebrations that they just wanted to crawl into a box.
** Don't, apparently.  Or if you do, try not to get into any fights with policemen or cross-dressing cage fighters.
** Don't pour it down the sink.  Nor should you put it out for the birds.  I realise this information is not much use to you now, on Boxing Day, as you are charged triple-time for unblocking the neighbourhood sewerage system and dead starlings are falling out of the sky and landing on the people from Dyno-Rod.  But if you've a good enough memory you might benefit from it next year.
**** Or possibly they ate them all, which is why they had to be re-imported from the New World 4,000 years later.
***** Not Graeco-Roman wrestling, which as the name suggests was invented by the Graeco-Romans as a way of occupying whole days of boredom at the time of Winter Solstice.  Imagine - all those dark evenings and no X-Factor or Celebrity Big Brother.