Boxing Day

 

 

Mr. Pom was in a mighty tizzy. In Massachusetts, The Jets vs. Giants game was not to be broadcast on Christmas Eve. Aside from the birth of you know who, the thing he was looking forward to on Christmas Eve  was the hours from 1 to 4, which were in his words "The Game Blackout". This meant that none of us were to disturb him, the TV, or his view and hearing of the TV during The Game.

So when we got to Cape Cod and found out that no one in Massachusetts was interested in the game and thus the local cable station was not broadcasting it,  an immediate hue and cry went up. To avoid the imbroglio, I set out for the store for an urgent run for anything that would get me out of the way of Mr. Pom's ire. Need more candy for the stockings, darling!  By the time I got home, peace had returned and Mr. Pom was in his comfy chair, feet up, beer in hand, surrounded by his son, son-in-law-to-be, and the women who stand by their men and do not ditch them for candy runs.

Mystery Man is subscribed to some sports website that had an  internet feed for a Canadian TV station that was broadcasting the game. A spew of wires led to and from the laptop, speakers, and TV, and the game was on the big screen. Happiness reigned in The Cottage until, inevitably, it didn't because The Jets lost.

The most only interesting part of the game for me was the Canadian TV commercials, which prominently featured sales for "Boxing Day". Boxing Day? What the heck is Boxing Day, the kids all asked.   How could you all be in your twenties and not know what Boxing Day is? I despaired - had I not raised a family of readers? Had they not learned anything from all those English novels they read? Blank stares faced me.  Oh, wait; I was the one  reading the English novels. I was the only one who knew what Boxing Day" was.

I should not have been surprised. Mr. Pom and I have noticed in twenty-somethings a certain gaps of what our generation would consider commonplace knowledge.   For example, there was great indignation expressed by a certain well-educated young adult who was on the search for a postal mailbox. Was I aware, I was asked, that there are olive green mailboxes that have no slot to mail a letter? And that they are scattered all over the neighborhoods and have seemingly no purpose whatsoever?  Do you mean the mail deposit boxes that hold the mail that is to be delivered that day? Ridiculous! was the response.  This is what happens when a whole generation has never had the need to mail a letter.

Taking on my role as the erudite, literary member of the family, I carefully and precisely educated them about Boxing Day. Boxing Day, I intoned, is    the day after Christmas, December 26th. Furious clicking on cell phones could be heard in response. Hey, she's right. It is December 26th.

Eyebrow raised at this need for cyber verification, I raised the ante. Okay, smarty pants (that's mother talk for a throw down), without looking at your phones, why is it called Boxing Day? Silence ensued and then,  "It's when you throw out all the boxes from your presents," one declared. Wrong!   "It's the day when you return all the stuff in the boxes that you don't like."  Nada! I relished the fact that I, alone, knew something that apparently all of Canada did but my own children did not.

Boxing Day, I declared with motherly pomposity, was the servant's day to celebrate Christmas and receive the "boxes" - gifts - from their employers.  Hence, in British commonwealths, the tradition continues to this day that  the day after Christmas is a holiday, turning the event into a much civilized and gracious two-day affair.

They all googled and binged and then confirmed that I actually do have some knowledge gleaned from being a mid-50's woman in the twenty-first century, knowledge that is not dependent on pixels, bing, google, or electronics of any kind.

Bathed in hubris, I was ready to further educate them on the card catalogue, research librarians, and even Shepardizing (non lawyers look it up). While I blathered on,  Mystery Man was hooking up his new game console.   As I prattled,  the game console began to spin of its own accord and everyone fell silent as the TV screen became populated with thermal images of our bodies appeared in position around the room, and electronic sensors were plotted onto them.  While waiting for the game to boot up, an incomprehensible discussion commenced about 3D TV and progressive scans vs. interlaced scans, and then the game announced it was ready and MM clicked through the screens by moving his hand in the air.

I felt my hoary little balloon of antiquated knowledge spring a large leak and begin to fly around the room, out of the house, into the sky, and across  the ocean, fueled only with the spent energy of my long-stored belief that my way was the true way. I imagine my grubby fistful of latex came to rest on a stack of damaged, water-stained and moldy books in the dodgy backroom of a decrepit library somewhere in coal-dirty London where a cracked bell could be heard tolling mournfully in the fog.

Despite the laptop, FB account, blog, Ipod, smart phone, and twitter account, I  was the rube in the room and I would never catch up. While I would never call my kids to ask how to work the answering machine, I was already calling as to how to get the TV back on cable and off the internet.   It was time to cede my cepter to the younger generation.

And my immense pleasure at not finding a Kindle in my stocking? More hubris.