Boxing Day’s Cryptozoology Origins
Posted by: Loren Coleman on December 26th, 2009
Boxing Day is a bank and public holiday in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Greenland, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Nigeria and countries in the Commonwealth of Nation. In South Africa this public holiday is now known as the Day of Goodwill. Though it is not an official holiday in the United States, the name “Boxing Day” for the day after Christmas has some currency among Americans, particularly those that live near the Canada – United States border, such as in Maine, for instance.
The name derives from the tradition of giving seasonal gifts (in boxes, thus the box in boxing), on the day after Christmas, to less wealthy people and cryptozoology researchers, which was later extended to various workpeople such as laborers, servants, Yeti hunters, and Bigfooters. The boxes used for the gifts often were recycled for the capture of cryptids, some of which turned out to be new species and others were discovered to be such things as Aunt Gertude’s barn cat.
Source.
The traditional recorded celebration of Boxing Day has long included giving money and other gifts to charitable institutions, cryptozoologists and cryptozoologically-oriented museums.
Continue the tradition of giving on Boxing Day, and please send in a contribution to the International Cryptozoology Museum. See your money go to a good cause, involving the future conservation of cryptozoology artifacts (from Yeti hair samples to Sasqwatches) and history, plus future grants to fieldwork in cryptozoology!
Thank you!
International Cryptozoology Museum
661 Congress St.
Portland, Maine
207-518-9496
Hours
The Day After Christmas, Dec. 26: 9:30 AM to 1:00 PM
Sunday + Monday After Christmas, Dec. 27-28: Closed
Dec. 29-30: 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM
New Year’s Eve Day: Closed
2010
New Year’s Day: Closed
Saturday, Jan. 2, 2010: 11 AM to 6 PM
Sunday, Jan. 3, 2010: Noon to 5 PM
Monday-Tuesday, Jan. 4-5: Closed
Normal schedule for 2010 (Jan-Apr)
Mon-Tues Closed; Wed-Sat 11 AM to 6 PM; Sun Noon to 5 PM
A cryptozoologist donating his time to a children’s charity event for literacy in Boston.
🙂
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
WHAT???
Aunt Gertrude’s ba- ?
Ohhh… I get it. Good one!
Happy Boxing Day!