Boxing Day

Here is a nod to Saint Stephen's Day, Boxing Day, The Day After Christmas.  A few days into the holiday with my husband's family, I wanted to draw something.  Boxing Day has always had a mystery to it - a cosy mystery, filled with leftovers and sweets.  Is it about the little foil-covered boxes that my mother would give me with a last little gift?  Is it about letterboxing races in the countryside?  (Unlikely)  Is it pugilistic?  (I know it's not pugilistic)  I don't think I was aware until today that it's about opening up the alms boxes and giving to the poor.

I like a good oddly-shaped, badly-carved, rusty-hasped alms box in an old church.  Doling out a mite to a quivering pauper is very quaint but no match for the welfare state.  I wondered about indicating that, and I suppose I have, by adding St. Stephen's Tower on the Palace of Westminster *.

Anyway, I'm ahead of myself.  What could be easier than drawing a pile of boxes?  Well, I've thrown a few in but I've focused on the alms box, surrounded by pretty much everything else I could think of.  Here goes:  runners letterboxing; a Dartmoor letterbox; a stamped notebook (I've never gone letterboxing, so it's a bit of a guess); boxes big and small; Saint Stephen's cross; a pile of stones and a palm for his martyrdom; Saul (later Saint Paul) holding the coats (Acts 7:58); holly to balance the palm; King Wenceslas looking out; the horns for the Boxing Day hunt (controversial, I know, so I've made them into a call to alms); the boxing game from my father's 1980s Casio calculator...  and that's it, except for Saint Etienne in the bottom right-hand corner.

Boxing Day!

I haven't mentioned the sales.
I added shading but it has gone crinkly and I'm away from a scanner.
Happy Boxing Day and Merry Christmas!


* This is another thing learnt this morning - the tower with Big Ben, which was recently renamed the Elizabeth Tower, was not really called St. Stephen's Tower, as many people thought, but a smaller tower in the complex was and still is.