Christmas Trivia #2

I sometimes wonder the origin of the word "Boxing day". It just reminds me of boxing kangaroos o.o!

I think it's more along the lines of boxed gifts, but I could be way off

I always thought it was because that was the day you "boxed up" all the Christmas decorations, but most people seem to leave their stuff up until February most of the time.

+1 You are correct

I doubt it. The traditional day to take down Christmas decorations is the 12th day of Christmas, 6 January.

It's the day they give gifts to people they do business with ... like the milkman, the mailman and so on.

It comes from the tradition of giving presents to the staff of the house (not just leftovers) in boxes (parcels)

you could be boxing your relatives after all the things they said at the dinner table the night before.

The origin lies in the servants of nobles during the Victorian era. Since they had to work and serve on Christmas Day, they were given the day after off to celebrate with their own families. They were given a box from their employer to share with their family.

There needs to be a grave accent on the first e of 'père'

Boxing day is basically where people would box presents or food and give it to the local church

As in if somebody actually cared about "politically correct".

It wasn't originally, and if it is now then it isn't really any more inclusive than "Merry Christmas" - not everybody has a holiday around then either.

Yes, Thanksgiving is always on the 4th Thursday of November. Why? There is some suspected history (see [http://www.equiculture.org/why-is-thanksgiving-on-thursday-.aspx], for example), but most of the reasoning you'll find is speculative at best. The most accurate reason is: because Congress said so.

Technically not true. Only American Thanksgiving is celebrated on the 4th Thursday of November. Canadian Thanksgiving is the 2nd Monday of October (it came first BTW).

@Symmetrik why is there even a Canadian Thanksgiving? The first Thanksgiving was celebrated between the pilgrims and Native Amricans in America.

The first evidence of Thanksgiving in Canada was In 1578, when a group of Artic explorers ran into freak storm and bad snow. They escaped relatively unscathed, and gave thanks for the strange fortunes that came to them in their survival. The next evidence was 1604, when French settlers following Samuel de Champlain, gave thanks with a huge feast after crossing the ocean.

Argh, I THOUGHT of Boxing Day but I thought it was in November for some reason! And Pere Noel... I couldn't remember the second part... I kept on saying Pere Christmas... Lol

Because for some unGodly reason, Christmas starts the day after Thanksgiving. I friggin hate it.

So the rest of us that don't have Thanksgiving don't get Christmas either?

There is actually a song about that. Christmas Can-Can. Heard this same song twenty times and it's only Halloween. It's not even cold outside. Christmas season, starting sooner every year. It's October, stores have plastic Christmas trees... etc. It's pretty darn funny. Sincerely recommend a listen.

You think you get it bad - in the UK it tends to start somewhere round the end of August. Or the shops think so anyway.

Though the all-consuming Christmas season continues to resorb more and more of the end of the calendar year... "Black Friday" has long been and I think still is considered the start of the Christmas *shopping* season, if not the season in general. It's when the sales start. It's when retailers can count of having their ledgers be "in the black" as many US retail chains make most of their profits this time of year.

Anyway, though the hint mentions Thanksgiving, the answer- Black Friday- is definitely about Christmas.

Christmas is the Borg of holidays. It grows larger and larger, consuming and assimilating all adjacent holidays until the entire year is one long onslaught of holiday music and consumerism. Resistance is Futile.

and, oh yeah, Christmas is under attack. Right...

Nobody is attacking the meaning of Christmas, either. Didn't you see Kirk Cameron's magnum opus Saving Christmas? It won a lot of awards. Razzies mostly. In it he explains how pagan polytheist traditions, shmaltzy holiday kitsch, and rampant crass consumerism are all really about Jesus.

More seriously, I've been hearing about people forgetting Christmas was about Christ since I was 5. That was 32 years ago. Nobody has forgotten yet.

I think I said this before. Maybe the comments were deleted. But there is nothing politically correct about saying "Happy Holidays" - a greeting that was perfectly accepted by Christians up until the invented "War on Christmas" came along and convinced people that this was somehow anti-Christmas. The question belongs as much on an April Fool's Quiz as the X-Mas question on this quiz

Exactly.

Thank you, Kalbahamut. I also grew up with Season's Greetings and Happy Holidays on cards and in store windows and we never thought anyone was using them to negate the "reason for the season". (Doesn't the word holiday come from holy day, anyway?) I prefer using those types of greetings in order to include people who celebrate other holidays during the same time, and it really irks me that some people have decided that means I'm un-Christian.

I understood it was meant to include New Year's greetings.

"Happy Holidays" has come to be a term that is meant to be inclusive (oh, the horror! Inclusiveness!!)... buuut... originally it WAS just intended as a shorter was of saying "Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." Later on people came to think that it also meant Happy Hannukah. And then eventually Kwanzaa got thrown in. I think it was around that time that people started getting angry. But these greetings have been in use, by Christians and non-Christians alike, for decades (Merry Xmas dates back to the 16th century!), without offending anyone.

or Frankensteinsense?

Frankenstein incense? Its just frankincense

Maybe that guy was joking.

There should be a quiz on "the holiday for the rest of us, Festivus" * Seinfeld quote*

Here you go! http://www.jetpunk.com/user-quizzes/106973/festivus-quiz

That's only the politically correct version in the States. In other areas of the world "Happy Festive Season" is politically correct, and should also be accepted. I am sure there are loads of other "politically Correct" sayings all over the world.

"In 1996, which toy was so popular that it was virtually unattainable in stores?" The Turbo-Man, of course!

I think Rammstein is more festive and Christmas-y than Mannheim Steamroller. They have that song about angels. And another about a piano. A bunch about sodomy.

Pretty sure Seasons' Greetings is as politically correct as Happy Holidays........

Technically these days to be PC you must get affirmative consent before wishing someone happy holidays. And if you are a man, "white," able-bodied, "cis"gendered, etc, it would also be wise to apologize profusely for your privilege before addressing a woman or person of color, or, really, anybody. Better to just keep your mouth shut. Who are you to oppress these people by insisting that they have a good day? What's next? Are you going to tell them to smile? Or compliment some part of their appearance? ugh! And "seasons greetings!?" Oh my god. Why are you greeting strange people you don't know. That's sexual harassment, obviously. You might as well be raping them.

First, these kooks use "gender" as a verb all the time. Maybe you missed the last meeting.

2nd, of course this ridiculous term was invented with a political agenda in mind. It can and has been used regularly as a pejorative, by those who also use "white", "male", and "privileged" as pejoratives (and there are many out there, I've had these insults hurled at me many times). But the original purpose was not so much to put down normal people but rather to take away and deny their normal status. Because while it should make perfect sense to refer to those who were born biologically male as simply "male" and those who were born biologically female as simply "female," if you exclusively attach prefixes to transsexuals then this is acknowledging that there is something unusual or different about their gender identity, and we can't have that, so they want to force unnecessary prefixes on everyone. At the same time calling people "cis-male" or "cis-female" pushes the narrative that ...

... gender is fluid or a social construct and that there is some need to identify if someone is the same gender they were born as. This is sort of like calling someone a human-person, or Siamese-Thai. It's redundant, unnecessary, and politically charged.

The way quotes work in this context is that you are quoting someone else- using someone else's words that are not your own words. These are not my own words. In some cases you may borrow someone else's words that you might also use yourself, but you want to use a proper attribution. But not in this case. I would never in my life refer to someone as "cis"gender un-ironically. I also don't recognize race as a real thing, so "white" is similarly appropriate. It's shorthand for saying something like "so-called white people" to acknowledge that while the label is invalid or just not something I would use myself, nevertheless there are people who use that label. My use of quotes was completely justified.

Glogg for mulled wine?

gold, gingerbread ostrich, and myrrh.

'Happy Holidays' is simply an Americanism, not necessarily politically correct

In every other quiz on this site Jell-O is the answer. Tried that here and moved on.

Plus, "A Visit from St. Nicholas" (aka 'Twas the Night Before Christmas') was published in 1823, and Jell-O wasn't invented until 1897.

Hm... Title of the quiz: Christmas Trivia #2. Date published on the site: 31st July??????

There weren't three wise men! An unknown number of "Magi from the east" (Matthew 2:1) brought gifts made of three materials (Matthew 2:11), thus everyone assumes there were three gifts; one wise man per gift. Also, "Happy Holidays" isn't the politically correct way to say Merry Christmas; it's the inclusive way to wish people happiness during whatever holiday they celebrate. "Merry Christmas" is the politically correct way to say Merry Christmas.

peanut butter and jell-o sandwiches?

I could be wrong, but I thought all , (or at least most) commonwealth countries celebrate Boxing Day

I explained this above. The question isn't about Thanksgiving, it's about Black Friday, which is the Friday after Thanksgiving and in the US traditionally marks the beginning of the Christmas shopping season.

Is Noel considered the last name of French Santa? If so, I tried just putting that, but got no credit.