Boxing Day takes its name from the ancient practice of opening boxes that contained money given to those who had given their service during the year. It was also the day when alms boxes, placed in churches on Christmas Day, were opened. The money was then given to the priest or used to help the poor and needy. Another name for Boxing Day used to be Offering Day.

The earliest boxes of all were not box shaped, as you might imagine, nor were they made of wood. They were, in fact, earthenware containers with a slit in the top (rather like piggy banks.) These earthenware �boxes� were used by the Romans for collecting money to help pay for the festivities at the winter Saturnalia celebrations.

During the seventeenth century it became the custom for apprentices to ask their master�s customers for money at Christmas time. They collected this money in earthenware containers, which could be opened only by being smashed, and on Boxing Day the apprentices would eagerly have a �smashing time�, hence the expression, seeing how much they had collected.

A later tradition, and the one which has survived to this day, was the distribution of Christmas �boxes�, gifts of money to people who had provided services throughout the year � the postman, the lamp-lighter, parish beadles, parish watchmen, dustmen and turn-cocks � which happened on the day after Christmas Day.