Ever notice...

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...how hard it is to remember how to START a thread here? (tho maybe that's a good thing )

Sorry, just a non sequitur, there. The reason I'm bothering y'all is something that happened to me yesterday.

Now one aunt I've got KNOWS she can't pick out a decent, appropriate gift for someone to save her life. So she gives cash. This year, my wife and I each got a crisp, new, Canadian fifty-dollar note from her. (Which makes me wonder if she's got a counterfiting press in the basement )

Anyways, we borrowed my folks' car to go 'boxing day shopping'...and discovered a change in commercial trends.

After finding a plethora of empty parking lots at even the big chain stores and returning home to grab the flyers from the last newspaper, we were confronted with "BOXING WEEK" sales, which initially I'd thought of as just a mercantile tactic to lengthen the window of availablity so as to encourage more sales - aparently not.

Up here, December 26 is ANOTHER day when all but maybe the donut shop and the convenience store are closed...and those few places that are open don't accept large denomination bills.

(And apparently it's not just counterfiting; they have small tills - breaking a $100 would probably leave them with no change for the next customer )

So now, today wifey and I have to 'hitch a ride' with my (s)mother to go shopping...

Oh joy.

 

I'm not sure what the point of the thread is friend. That boxing day isn't what it used to be? "Boxing week" is definatly a a mercantile tactic. So is christmas. Spend spend spend and everyone will love you.

 

Sounds like the point was that he was surprised to find retail stores closed on Boxing Day...

 

Seeing that his wife is American, she probably assumed Wal-mart and the like would be open on Dec. 26, 6a., just like it is in the States.

When you're indoctrinated into the capitalistic pig-swine beliefs of a certain country, expecting the same ideals in other places is not out of the blue. I also thought store would be opened the day after Christmas and spent money at Chapters bookstore when it and Tim Horton's (coffee/donut shop) were the only things open.

I don't know why Boxing Day is a national holiday in Canada, U.K., Australia. It's not as though civil and city workers don't get enough holidays in December.

 

Actually according to the wikipedia Boxing Day is a statuatory holiday in only some of the provinces of Canada.

Everyone I know around here (Alberta) has to work on boxing day or not get paid for it. (Unless they work in a bank or for the govn't.)

 

It's not a holiday here in Manitoba, but it used to be. Many of employers give it off anyway - I don't know if that's because they don't know the law changed, or because they know they'd have a lot of ticked off employees if they took away a day off.

 

So if I want to shop on December 26th, I have to fly/drive to Quebec or Maine.

Fun.

 

Boxing Day IS a statutory holiday in New Zealand . . . . but the shops are all open.

Statutory holidays in this country really only mean that office workers don't go to work and it costs 15% more to go to cafe.

 

Ah, we get that, too - you often hear "Many Happy Returns" on that day...

 

lmao Kuemps a very Repairman Jack-like answer. "I prefer to be addressed as running dog of the imperialist capitlist swine"

FYI he's a character in a series of novels by F. Paul Wilson. Good stuff although I've only read the 1st one: The Tomb.

 

Wish December 26 were a holiday in the U.S., so my extended family could sit down in peace for the day after Christmas gathering (we all have Christmas Eve responsibilities and I at least have to travel far to get to other family members on Christmas Day). Among my family Dec. 26 does indeed trigger another frenzied round of spending.

When I worked for a big university, employees had both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off - when one of those fell on a weekend the university would designate a weekday as the replacement holiday, so those folks got Dec. 26 as a holiday this year.