I’ve always loved Boxing Day, St Stephen’s Day. I was lucky with my early junior school education because we were taught things like the reason it was called Boxing Day – when employees went round to their bosses with a box for their annual tip or bonus, and that St Stephen was the first Christian martyr, as mentioned in ‘Good King Wenceslas’ … but I’m digressing here.
As a child, Boxing day was a leisurely day with none of the excited activity and cooking of Christmas Day. Boxing Day was a time to play games, maybe new ones if we had been lucky enough to receive any, read new books, eat sweets and have cold turkey and pickles and jacket potatoes for lunch followed by cold Christmas pudding (no microwaves then) and mince pies… a lovely day.
I’m not sure when it started, but it also became a tradition to visit my dad Donald’s friend and boss, Dr S. M. Partridge, Sam as Donald called him, and his family on Boxing Day. Sam and his elegant wife Ruth, had four daughters, the third of whom became my dear friend Frankie. We used to call round often as we went for a walk, to offer seasons greetings. This continued over the years and when our families moved to Somerset, on the closing of the Low Temperature Research Station, where Donald and Sam worked, and the move of the research team to the Meat Research Institute, that on Boxing day we would drive over to Cheddar where the Partridges lived.
It was wonderful to meet up with our friends; Sam would make cocktails, brandy and champagne or dry Martini, or offer gin and tonic, little refreshments would be served… the best of which surely were the fabulous cheese balls, little deep-fried puffs of cheesy deliciousness…
Frankie and I live about twenty miles away from each other now, and when possible we still try and see each other, if not on Boxing Day, then at least over the Christmas period, and when we don’t mange to meet, I always think of her on the 26th December, and remember the happy times when our families got together.
Lois Elsden 
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