The day after Christmas

 Happy Boxing Day

I learned about the day after Christmas when I was in High School while working part-time after school at a men's clothing store.  The day after Christmas was, in this store, the busiest day of the year. The store was swamped with returns and exchanges not to mention people anxious to spend their Christmas money. 

I do not recall the store conducting an after-Christmas sale on the day after Christmas. Usually that was a bit later. But on the sales floor, we were swamped. It was total anarchy from opening at 9 AM until closing at 5 PM, unless, as it is this year, the day after Christmas was a Friday and then the store was open until 9 PM.

My Dad was a manager at the store and at the end of the day we would walk, exhausted, to his car to head home. We did a lot of father-son bonding during the short couple of years that I worked at the store. It is a good memory. 

I never knew that the day after Christmas was also Boxing Day. I only learned of Boxing Day some years later. To my knowledge, American society has never given a name to the day after Christmas, unlike Black Friday which as we know is the day after Thanksgiving. 

That clothing store is long gone. It is just a shell of itself on Cayuga Street in Ithaca. I likely will never pass by it again, but I remember working on the sales floor as well as pressing clothes after the tailors had altered them, washing the windows, straightening stock, shoveling snow, breaking ice, vacuuming every night, taking out the garbage, and doing whatever the owner thought needed to be done. 

But I also remember my Dad. And the day after Christmas.

-- Bob Doan, Odenton, MD