Boxing Day Madness

There once was a time when Boxing Day was a day of lethargic family festivities. It was a time when our overstuffed digestive systems would attempt to cope with the barrage of gluttony that we indulged in the day before. A time when we would lounge around our houses with our family and play with the gifts we had been given for Christmas or watch movie marathons on TV. It was a time when we didn’t have to worry about the approaching January sales because they were a week away.
But not anymore.

The quiet slumber of Boxing Day has now become a hectic rush of sales shopping in which hundreds of thousands descend upon the high street like a pilgrimage to appease the God of consumerism. Almost all major stores opened their doors today to frantic, manic, wild eyes bargain hunters. Only M&S, Morrisons and Waitros maintained some dignity in abiding by the Yule time Calendar. The other stores were packed with maniacs all fighting with zealous abandonment, desperate to find the best bargains around. It was like 28 Days Later with a discount sign.

However, what is strange about all this is that the items in the sales are the poor quality crap that stores couldn’t get rid of before Christmas at full price so now need to be flogged off with massive discounts. It reminded me of the classic joke in the Simpsons when Apu tries to appease Homer’s complaints with five pounds of fish in a bucket. “This shrimp isn't frozen! And it smells funny!” Homer observes. “Ok, ten pounds!” Apu says pulling out another bucket. “Wahoo!”
It’s exactly the same in the “January” sales. The poor quality stuff that couldn’t be sold at Christmas is sold at half the price and everyone acts as if it’s the last days of Rome and the Coliseum is 50% off. The clothing giant Next was open at 7am today to appease these idiots. As I locked up my bike near my local Next store I saw two employees standing at the entrance handing out bin bags to entering shoppers so that they could carry all the items they need. The worst thing was that some of the shoppers looked slightly disappointed with their bin bag, realizing its 40 liter capacity wasn’t going to be enough to hold the small mountain of clothes they were intending to buy. I was saddened to see more than one person return for a second bag.

Now, all this post Christmas madness had a depressingly significant effect on our little coffeeshop: It filled us with even more enraged shoppers that usual.

But that wasn’t even the worst part.

As I have already stated, Boxing Day is traditionally a time for families. And it still is. Except now they have been torn from the warm bosom of the living room and are plunged into cold town centers and shopping districts. This means the age range of our customers today raised from about 15 – 40 years old, to everyone between the ages of 1 and 100. Yes, the youngest son and the oldest grandparents were pulled along to “enjoy” family time, (although I’m sure neither had a bloody clue what was going on or where they were, instead they choice to crumple in their chair in a semi-sentient daze drooling on themselves).

This also meant that instead of customers buying coffee for themselves and maybe one other person, they were buying for their entire extended family. One member of the family would try and painfully recite an order of sixteen coffees, often forgetting halfway through who was having what and have to start all over again. It had to sit through these forgetful litanies over and over again. It was like having Peaches Geldof attempting to recite the alphabet to you.
After this was over the kids would necklarge hot chocolates from mugs that were three times the size of their upper bodies and then go charging around the store like lobotomized monkeys trying to escape a testing lab. The parents, trapped under the mountain of shopping bags would be powerless to stop the buggers from causing havoc. Gradually anarchy spread through the store as children from different families started interacting with each other without laws, restraint of supervision. It made Lord of the Flies look like a weekend retreat.

Eventually the madness came to an end as the afternoon turned to evening and everyone realized what a horrible, stressful, expensive and pointless day it had been meandering between clustered groups of assholes and generally acting like a bellend. Perhaps next year they will think better and just stay at home with a game of Boggle and The Great Escape on TV. However, because the collective IQ of these bargain hunters seems to be only slightly above that of a toaster, they’ll probably all do it again next year, completely forgetting the misery it caused themselves this year.