I wonder if everybody else has the same problem I have…when there’s a holiday in the middle of the week, I expect the day following the holiday to be a Sunday or a Monday. It throws me off for the entire week. Maybe that’s part of getting older or maybe it’s being retired. It really doesn’t matter if today is Monday or Thursday. (except when it’s time to take the garbage out!)
Of course, most of our holidays are now scheduled for Mondays so folks get long weekends. When I lived in Canada it was really strange to have Thanksgiving on a Monday!
Canadians also celebrated today as “Boxing Day”. Observed in most Commonwealth countries. One tradition is that it is the day when servants and tradesmen would receive gifts from their bosses. Another is that it’s the day when you pack up the old (having received new on Christmas) into boxes and give them to the poor.
Just a few more days until New Year’s. Here’s something interesting about a custom in Scotland called First Foot Day:
The superstition goes back to the era of the Viking raiders when a fair-haired Norseman at a Scotsman’s door meant trouble.
If the first person to set foot in your house on the morning of January 1 is a dark-haired male, you will have good luck for the entire year. Ideally a first footer should bring gifts, such as:
- a lump of coal to symbolize warmth all year
- a silver coin for wealth and prosperity
- some bread so you’ll never be hungry
After greeting everyone in the house, the first footer must exit through a different door from the one he had entered. Nobody should leave the house before the first footer shows up because the first traffic across the threshold should be coming in, not going out.
Blonde and red-haired male first footers bring BAD LUCK.
A female first footer spells DISASTER on the entire household.
I guess some dark-haired males have to stay out all night long so they can enter houses and bring good luck. Doesn’t say that the dark-haired male can’t enter any number of houses. Wonder if the luck gets weaker in the second house than in the first?
Who said superstitions had to make sense?