I’m not a fan of government interference. The Nanny State irks me no end. Here in my corner of Canada they’ve taken meddling to new heights with everything from price controls on petrol and dairy to policing people’s recycling. They actually have someone paid to check that you put your trash in the right coloured bags under the guise of ‘saving the planet’. In reality they’re just making work for bureaucrats instead of taking on projects that could effect real change while propping up industries that have lined the politicians pockets. Don’t get me started.
Yet in the thick of all this pseudo-support and thinly-veiled societal engineering, it seems they got something right. Boxing Day. The day after Christmas for you folks down in the Colonies not used to such things. Normally a huge shopping day in the Commonwealth countries and indeed out in the western folds of dear Canada they embrace the commercialism with due aplomb. Here in the East Coast countryside however they’re having none of that. It’s a second holiday by law. You heard correctly. In the Maritime provinces Christmas lasts two days. Nothing is open. Stores are shuttered tight, banks hibernate, and you’re hard-pressed to find even a filling station open on the main highways. The government meddlers have told everyone to just chill for an extra day and quite frankly it’s refreshing to see people actually decompressing their workaday lives by those precious extra hours.
And it shows too. The neighbours are all out wandering aimlessly around the lawn in our unusually warm December weather with a slightly confused look on their faces. All the rush is over and with the rest of the county taking a break, they actually seem confounded by what to do with themselves. Sure that happens on Christmas day everywhere but when you make them take a whole extra twenty-four hours and look up for a change, the effect is staggering. Some of them might even put down their smartphones and tweetyspacepages long enough to appreciate the outside for short while. The little girl neighbour around the corner certainly was screaming with glee at her new pink bicycle all day without an internet connection in sight.
So there you go people of the one-day Christmas world. Why not take the extra day and just pretend all those sales don’t start until the 27th. The locals here seem to get in just as much buying madness even if they do start a day late. Happy holidays out there.
