Boxing Day

 

The day after Christmas is known as Boxing Day in Britain and most Commonwealth nations.  I've had a few questions from American friends about why it's named that.  Wikipedia supplies a simple answer:

The Oxford English Dictionary gives the earliest attestation from Britain in 1743, defining it as "the day after Christmas day", and saying "traditionally on this day tradespeople, employees, etc., would receive presents or gratuities (a 'Christmas box') from their customers or employers."

The term "Christmas box" dates back to the 17th century, and among other things meant:

A present or gratuity given at Christmas: In Great Britain, usually confined to gratuities given to those who are supposed to have a vague claim upon the donor for services rendered to him as one of the general public by whom they are employed and paid, or as a customer of their legal employer; the undefined theory being that as they have done offices for this person, for which he has not directly paid them, some direct acknowledgement is becoming at Christmas.

In Britain, it was a custom for tradesmen to collect "Christmas boxes" of money or presents on the first weekday after Christmas as thanks for good service throughout the year. This is mentioned in Samuel Pepys' diary entry for 19 December 1663. This custom is linked to an older British tradition in which the servants of the wealthy were allowed the next day to visit their families since they would have had to serve their masters on Christmas Day. The employers would give each servant a box to take home containing gifts, bonuses, and sometimes leftover food. Until the late 20th century, there continued to be a tradition among many in the UK to give a Christmas gift, usually cash, to vendors, although not on Boxing Day, as many would not work on that day.

There's more at the link.

As a child in South Africa, I remember my parents putting together "Christmas boxes" (usually envelopes) for the workers who delivered mail, bottles of milk, and other services to our home.  They'd give them to the workers a couple of days before Christmas, rather than the day after, because so many of them would be hung over after Christmas and might not make it to work that day!

With the passing of the "servant era" in Western society, the concept of Boxing Day has died away, too.  I think that's a pity.  It's worth remembering those on whose service we rely every day of the year, and acknowledging that in some practical way.

Peter

A happy, holy and blessed Christmas to all my readers

 

May the reason for the season find a home in your hearts, and may we all remember precisely Who we are celebrating at this time of year.

This blog will go silent tomorrow in honor of the day.  I'll be back on Friday.

And, for those who prefer a secular season, this kicked over my giggle-box!

Peter

A very timely reminder about emergencies

 

The former Secretary-General of NATO, Lord Robertson of Britain, is not complacent about the danger of war in Europe.  He warns that Britain, and by extension every other country in NATO, needs to better prepare its citizens for what might happen.

Robertson has a torch [flashlight] on his key ring, in case the lights go out, and some spare money, in case the ATMs stop working in London.

“We are under attack,” Robertson, 79, said. He is now a Labour peer and has met Putin nine times.

“He (Putin) is a very different individual to the one that I did business with.”

. . .

“I think we are being tested. They’re going to the edge of what they think is acceptable. They won’t go across that line, at this point,” Robertson said of Russia.

Targeted assassinations, cyberattacks, sabotage and disinformation campaigns are all examples of Moscow’s so-called grey zone activities.

“That’s the way in which you undermine western societies. There is no doubt at all, there is a challenge to the West,” he added.

. . .

“With our adversaries becoming bolder and our critical national infrastructure becoming more fragile and much more on a knife edge, we need to be much much better prepared than we are today,” he said “It won’t be enough to wait to until the lights go out and the hospitals shut and the data centres melt because the air conditioning has gone out and the traffic lights have stopped and the ATMs don’t work anymore.

“At that point, people will expect government to have done something,” he said.

. . .

Robertson was as “ready as I could be”, with torches [flashlights] in every room, a battery-powered radio and a stockpile of food and water.

He said it was also the case in the UK that the public needed to have “resilience” in case there were civil emergencies or financial disasters.

Following Knighton’s speech at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) this week, he suggested the government could start to engage the public by issuing booklets to prepare UK citizens for war, such as Sweden’s recent If Crisis or War Comes.

There's more at the link.

All the risks he highlights are likely to occur in the USA as well.  We've already had concrete evidence of the dangers:

• Known terrorists identified and arrested within our borders, some even legally admitted due to lax background checks;
• Foreign students trying to smuggle dangerous bacteriological material into the USA (and don't tell me it's for "research" - if it was, they could legally obtain all they need within the country, without smuggling.  They can only have been planning to position it to do as much damage as possible if and when released);
• Foreign criminal gangs and drug cartels actively setting up cells and groups in almost every major US city, including smuggling weapons, illegal narcotics and other dangerous substances across our borders.

Such people, and/or those they've influenced, could very easily disrupt a city by the simplest of sabotage activities.  I'm not going to go into details, for obvious reasons, but back in the day, I was a sector officer in civil defense for one of South Africa's largest cities.  I know whereof I speak.  The ease with which ordinary, everyday services and utilities could be disrupted was enough to make for sleepless nights, and now that everything's dependent on computer systems and (increasingly) artificial intelligence, they are even more vulnerable.  That's why China, among others, is trying to deliberately infiltrate as many industrial, commercial and control networks as possible - so that it can disrupt them at the flick of a switch if it should become necessary to them.

I'm not a doom, gloom and disaster merchant.  I don't run around crying "Wolf!"  However, the evidence of these dangers is all around us, and I don't have to make up a thing to justify improving our personal and family preparedness for the sorts of problems and disruptions that may occur.  I daresay most American households could not survive serious shortages or systemic breakdowns for as little as a week;  a month is probably out of the question for most of them - yet I (and many others) regard a month as a minimum period to be able to get by without outside assistance.  Attitudes toward preparedness need to change, and change quickly, if we're to be able to withstand the sort of problems raised by Lord Robertson, the Swedish government, and so many others.

A timely reminder indeed.

Peter

An interesting conundrum

 

From Eaton Rapids Joe:

Are more people carrying "crazy-genes" then they did in the past?

The short answer is "yes".

As recently as 1900 in developed countries like Ireland, England and Germany, if your mother was crazy you were probably not going to live to see your first birthday ... In total, crazy-genes had a high probability of "dead-ending". In those days the pool of crazy people resulted from random meetings of recessive genes or in new mutations.

Flash-forward to the permissive, Welfare-State.

... back when "crazy-genes" self-extinguished we experienced a rate of approximately 5% seriously crazy people. Now the crazy-people genes are subsidized rather than exposed to Darwinian selection and the numbers are growing much faster (due to high risk behaviors) than the numbers of not-crazy people.

There's more at the link, including examples.  Recommended reading.

I hadn't made the connection in genetic terms.  Like almost everybody, I've noted the increase in the number of crazy-behaving "street people":  talking to themselves, gesticulating wildly even though they're not talking to anybody, behaving very oddly and sometimes self-destructively, and so on.  However, without thinking about it much, I'd assumed that much of this was due to the lack of mental health care (after the closure of most sanatoriums and institutional mental health care facilities).  I hadn't thought about the fact that the sheer survival rate of everyone, on average, also meant that more "crazy-genes" were also surviving, and therefore slowly increasing in proportion to the rest of the population.

So . . . if that's the case, how are we going to deal with the problem?  We can't very well simply execute those with "crazy-genes" - not and still regard ourselves as human beings.  On the other hand, we do them (and ourselves, and our society) no favors by allowing them to increasingly take over our streets.  What next?

Peter

I feel like a laboratory specimen

 

Most of my readers are doubtless aware of my ongoing medical issues, including the removal of a kidney back in September, and your generous response to my appeal for funds to help pay for previous expenses plus what lies ahead.  I'm very grateful to you all for your ongoing support.

I'm in the middle of a series of follow-up consultations on what the various tests have discovered.  Briefly, my lower spine has deteriorated rather more than anticipated, partly due to the injury I suffered in 2004 and its treatment at that time, and partly due to my advancing age.  There's no doubt that further surgery will be needed.  One "side" of the medical fraternity thinks that it will be best to extend my existing spinal fusion to take in two adjacent vertebrae.  The other "side" says that won't be enough, and instead wants to remove the existing fusion altogether and encase my lower (lumbar) spine in a sort of cage or mesh, supporting the whole thing in all directions.  Both sides agree that surgery is necessary, but not what surgery, or how to go about it.  Me, I'm the "piggy-in-the-middle", a playing-ground for neurosurgeons who are having a fine old time arguing with each other about what they (rather than I!) want to do next.  It's . . . frustrating - and while all the arguing is going on, I'm paying for their discussions.  That's even more frustrating!

There are trade-offs to be considered as well.  It seems that whatever surgical solution is adopted, my lumbar vertebrae are likely to end up pretty solidly fixed together.  That's going to make bending and twisting a lot harder than it already is (even though pain levels should improve).  The mesh solution will be more restrictive than extending the fusion, but will offer greater long-term support.  Which to choose, and why?  I'm a layman.  I can't answer that - but the doctors won't give me a single, straightforward answer.  They simply tell me the alternatives, then say "It's up to you which one you want to choose."  Since I'm not an expert, and I can't predict the future or its challenges, how am I supposed to know which to choose?  I may as well glue some gears on my spine and call it steampunk!

So, here's what's going to happen over the next six months to a year.

• I'm going to work with a pain management specialist, a neurosurgeon (possibly more than one) and a neurologist, to try to pin down the best approach to solving my spinal problems and getting into the best shape I can for whatever lies ahead.  In the short term, I may get a Spinal Cord Stimulation unit implanted in my back;  that's currently (you should pardon the expression) under consideration.
• I'm going to try to get a lot fitter and lose a lot of weight.  I'm going to find that very difficult, because my pain levels increase drastically when I exercise (even walking a short distance);  hence the SCS unit and/or increased doses of analgesics (to be determined).  It's a high priority.  I'll probably follow Dr. Jason Fung's fasting protocol (adjusted to suit my needs) for several days each week, in an effort to speed up the weight loss, but that will have to be carefully monitored to see whether or not my medication doses need to be amended to compensate.  If it's not one thing, it's another . . .
• I'll continue physical therapy and other exercises, so as to be in the best possible condition (which isn't saying much!) for whatever the surgeons may determine is the way forward.

This means the surgery I expected to have during the first quarter of 2026 will be postponed, certainly until the second half of the year and perhaps longer.  I don't like that - I'd much rather get it over right now! - but the specialists are unanimous that I need to "make haste slowly" and not rush it.  I'll be guided by their expertise, if only because they won't operate until they're more sure themselves!  I'm in their hands and at their mercy.

Ongoing care at this level will continue to be a drain on the funds I've saved up (and you've donated) for hospital treatment, but it's unavoidable right now.  As I recover from the loss of a kidney, I find I'm able to write more easily, so I'll try to get a new book (perhaps a new series?) out during 2026.  God willing, that will help to fund more medical misadventures.

Thank you all for your prayers, support and understanding.  I'll continue to "fight the good fight" as long and as hard as I can.

Peter

Memes that made me laugh 291

 

Gathered from around the Internet over the past week.  Click any image for a larger view.

Sunday morning music

 

'Tis the season for Christmas music - but not the ghastly commercialized muzak that bombards us from every direction.  Let's go back to 1912, and Vaughn Williams' "Fantasia on Christmas Carols".

Much more seasonal (not to mention spiritual!).

Peter