Boxing Day
If Christmas is about family, friends, presents, delicious food, Father Christmas and Christmas trees, then Boxing day in Cape Town is about the beach.
Many families and groups of friends gather their picnic hampers and blankets and head for the beaches by car, train, taxi or any other means of transport – with yesterday’s leftovers and enough ‘luxuries’ (sweets) to feed half the people there. Usually it does!
On the Cape Flats, growing up during the last years of apartheid, meant being able to go to only certain beaches. My family started off going to Kalk Bay and ended up at Maiden’s Cove, on the Atlantic Coast. We avoided Strandfontein Pavilion on Boxing Day, because of its reputation of blue bottles and drunken patrons. What a day when beaches were opened to all. We headed for Gordon’s Bay…for regular beach visits, not only the holidays.
I stopped going to the beach on Boxing Day when my parents allowed me to stay home alone. Boxing Day became test match cricket day – watching the game on tv in peace, without having to fight for the remote control.
This year I will miss sitting in the stands at Newlands on Tweede Nuwejaar (2 January), but fortunately the Proteas won’t be going to Australia over the Festive Season again without a reciprocal visit from the Aussies.
Boxing Day has now been renamed Family Day in this country, although it’s still Boxing Day to us. Sounds so much more like the day after Christmas.
