I've always been curious about Boxing Day. I just like the name, I guess. Boxing ... Day. Has it do with boxes? The pugnacious sport of boxing? What?

Christmas, naturally, gets all the attention. And that's understandable. There's this Savior. A star demarcates his birth. Three wise guys see it. Bring him gifts. Prophecy fulfilled.

But, wait, there's more. Children of all faiths, and buyers of consumer stocks, rejoice in His Holy Name for millennia because with his birth comes an annual shopping ritual that defies logic and Puritan restraint, and boosts all but the most moribund economies. Boxing Day? It is nearly impossible to define in a simple way.

One of many theories suggests that this second fiddle holiday has to do with a time when England ruled the seas, and servants were plentiful. On Boxing Day, according to lore, the servants got the day off, received a nice extra bonus, and the co-dependent aristocrats had to fend for themselves (usually with box lunches the servants prepared in advance) These days Boxing Day is akin to our oddly named Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, when there's a further orgy of shopping at similarly reduced prices.

But, for me, Boxing Day is more personal. My late mother was born on December 26th. Though technically Boxing Day is a moving holiday (thus, this year it will be celebrated on Monday, the 28th, since the actual holiday falls today, Saturday, a day when banks aren't open anyway), in my mind it is connected forever with the 26th. This is important because of all the things my lovely, passionate mother enjoyed (excessive snapshot taking, scrapbook-making for those voluminous snapshots, organ playing, hosting themed cocktail parties, five-star travel in third world countries, prolix letter writing, mailing of editorials admonishing, as early as '77, against my far-sighted participation in cutting edge interests from organic food to yoga to solar power – EACH of which became a multi-billion dollar industry --, faux French cooking, musical theater, golf, tennis, 19th century historic preservation, and the politics of Bill Buckley, Phyllis Schlafly, and Bill O'Reilly), the activity she enjoyed more than any other was shopping.

Yes, you will claim, stereotypically, that all women love to shop. But this is not true. Amish women don't like to shop. Shaker women didn't do much shopping. Mennonite, Mormon Polygamist, and Stoic women probably don't shop much either. But my mom, she lived for shopping. And today back in Omaha -- where she rose from humble South Omaha bank teller's daughter to dermatologist's wife -- legends still abound about her shopping prowess. If Warren Buffett is the Oracle of Omaha, my mother was his secret sauce.

I half-joke that the reason our economy has rebounded so slowly is that my mother passed away on Christmas, 2002. The removal of major league shoppers like Bev Crotty, and all those who tried to emulate her, surely made a major dent in profits for Berkshire-owned Omaha retailers from Borsheim's Jewelry to the Nebraska Furniture Mart to many more beyond.

So, today, as I contemplate Boxing Day, against the backdrop of a still shaky economy, I contemplate my mother, one of the most prodigious shoppers Omaha ever produced. Alas, as contrarian as I was while she was alive, so contrarian I must still be, even as I honor her memory. While she would think such a sentiment to be radically leftist and decidedly unpatriotic, please, please, on this holiday, for once already, DON'T SHOP. Don't spend. Instead, enjoy what you have with whom you have. Because, honestly, when I think about WHY my mother shopped, it was invariably to honor others. So, let us honor each other on Boxing Day, by spending not a pence.

Sincerely,

-- James Marshall Crotty
Boxing Day, and Beverly Crotty's Birthday, December 26th, 2009, Princeton, New Jersey