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The Stop
In Great Britain and some Commonwealth countries, Boxing Day (26 December) is a holiday in which ‘servants, tradespeople, and the poor traditionally were presented with gifts’ - though today it’s mostly associated with shopping and sporting events. There are several explanations for its name, but two in particular seem to make (equally) good sense. One theory is that it derives from the practice of opening alms boxes that had been placed in churches to collect donations for the poor. The other is that the name comes from the boxes of gifts employers gave their servants the day after Christmas when those who had to work through the holiday were given the next day off. Regardless of the origin, since living in the UK for the last twenty years, Boxing Day has become my favourite day of the Christmas holiday because it’s all about family, food and coming down gradually from the high of the day before. And in this spirit, today’s Stop includes links to five videos of varying subjects and varying lengths you can just curl up on a sofa and enjoy. Or not. Today is Boxing Day, after all.1
Link 1: ‘Rectangles and Triangles’ might be a maths video (2:23), but it’s based around a catchy tune that will earworm itself into your mind until you suddenly feel a whole lot better about geometry.
Link 2: The only Christmas-related video, ‘Santa is a Psychedelic Mushroom’ (6:35) is an animated explanation of how the legend of Santa - including the ideas of flying reindeer, entering houses through chimneys to bring gifts, and wearing red and white - might have been the result of ancient Finnish/Lapland shamans ingesting amanita muscaria mushrooms.2 Interesting throughout - and if you have time for only one of these links, click this one!
Santa is a Psychedelic Mushroom
Link 3: This video (8:28) is self-explanatory: ‘Futuremmercials 2177’ is a collection of commercials from the future - where things really haven’t changed all that much.
Link 4: ‘Hávamál’ is a beautifully shot, atmospheric short film (11:55) about surfers in the islands and islets of the Lofted archipelago in far north Norway. The title is taken from a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking Age.
Link 5: The longest video (27:50), ‘The Insane Scale of Europe’s New Mega-Tunnel’ explores the construction of a record-breaking tunnel between Denmark and Germany. Fascinating for anyone who wonders just how these things are built.
The Insane Scale of Europe's New Mega-Tunnel
The Recommendation
Today’s recommendation is The Holiday (2006). Written and directed by Nancy Meyers,3 and starring Cameron Diaz, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Jack Black, Eli Wallach and Rufus Sewell, it’s a romantic comedy with just the right feel for Boxing Day. Two women - one in California, the other in England - who’ve been unlucky in love arrange a home exchange to escape heartbreak during Christmas - and, of course, end up falling in love with two local guys. I’ll be honest - it’s preposterous (Jack Black and Kate Winslet - really?!) and contrived, but it’s one of my favourite holiday films - mostly (and my daughter shares this understanding) because of Jude Law’s house. Nevertheless, the film is gentle and fun and everything works out beautifully in the end - and that’s reason enough to give it a couple of hours.
The Holiday streams on multiple platforms, but in the UK it’s a TV staple.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is composed of five tracks that can be played in the background4 while you’re coming down from yesterday’s excitement: ‘Avril 14th’ (Aphex Twin, 2001), ‘A Final Hit’ (Leftfield, 1996), ‘Trigger Hippie’ (Morcheeba, 1996), ‘Fat Old Sun’ (Pink Floyd, 1970) and ‘Solid Ground’ (Michael Kiwanuka, 2019).
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from the Roman poet Ovid (43BCE - 17CE):5
‘Take a rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next stop …
As an American ex-pat who now works on the last Thursday of November, I think of Boxing Day as a sort of surrogate Thanksgiving. There aren’t any gifts required, already-out Christmas decorations do the trick, and inevitably there’s a puzzle on the go while some sport is on TV in the background and somebody, somewhere is reading a book. The source for today’s Stop is Boxing Day (Britannica).
For more about the amanita muscaria mushroom, see The Bus 1.43 (1 September 2022).
Meyers has written, produced and directed many films including Private Benjamin (1980), Irreconcilable Differences (1984), Father of the Bride (1991), What Women Want (2000) and Something’s Gotta Give (2003). Certainly, all of a type.
Though they all deserve attentive listening, too. The Morcheeba track is brilliant - it was played on continual repeat in my apartment the summer after it was first released - and the Floyd track is from their underrated (and possibly my favourite) album Atom Heart Mother. And, hands down, the Kiwanuka track is sublime.
Ovid is scheduled for a Bus Stop, but for more information in the meantime see: Ovid (Britannica).
Thanks, Bryan, finally a reasonable explanation for the Santa Claus myth. Christmas would be much more lovely sans the crazed capitalism engulfing and spewing it.
You know I would have shown my young math students the triangle and rectangle video. So much better presentation than still chalk drawings on the old green board!
Another fun edition - I like how we both chose Boxing Day as a topic. The Holiday is a fun movie - Winslet is clearly the MVP of the movie.