Perhaps a punch to the face isn’t the best present.
When I was really young, I asked my mum why it was called Boxing Day to which she replied “it’s because there’s a lot of boxing on TV”. This was back when I couldn’t verify anything, being an impressionable 3/4-year old and living in ye olden days before Google or Wikipedia were even a glint in their creators’ eyes.
But I am much older and I’m constantly fact checking so I decided to revisit this question and sadly, my mum had given me quite the full story. Boxing Day is called that due to an old British custom where “Christmas boxes” were filled with money and/or presents on the first weekday after Christmas to give to workers as a thank you for their service.
So nothing to do with pugilism but that hasn’t stopped there being boxing on Boxing Day, albeit in countries outside of the UK and US. Nick Parkinson wrote about seasonal boxing in 2015 and mentioned bouts in Belgium, Argentina, Italy, Japan, Nigeria and Ghana on Boxing Day that year. And historically, there was a major fight in 1908 between Jack Johnson and defending world heavyweight champion Tommy Burns in Australia:
Toying with the outclassed defending champion, Tommy Burns, ‘The Galveston Giant’ finally ended the one-sided beatdown in the 14th round. To avoid any video evidence of a black man knocking out a white man, cameras were shut off and the police stormed the ring to call a halt to the pummelling.
This historic victory began Johnson’s iconic seven-year reign as heavyweight ruler and marked a seismic moment in the fight for racial equality.
via BOXRAW
(Not to confuse the situation but if you’re wondering when International Boxing Day is, that’s on 27th August)