I have heard of several reasons why that day is called 'Boxing Day'. One is that people who wanted to exchange their Christmas gifts,(or Christmas Boxes) for one reason or another, chose that day to do so.
Another was how the people would put money in "poor boxes" for those less fortunate than they. Whatever the reason it was a holiday and we took advantage of it by visiting some of the houses in the area, asking to see their tree and hoping for a treat. Most of the people were very kind and asked us inside.
While we oohed and aahed over the tree, our hostess would disappear and return with a glass of syrup and a slice of fruit cake for us. Others gave us an apple or orange while others supplied us with candy.It was a lovely time of year.
We would then go off to the movies. We would take along what comic books we had read and would try to exchange them for ones we had not read yet. We'd go from row to row,hoping we'd find someone with comics that were new and many exchanges were made. We would happily return to our seats and wait for the movie to begin.
For ten cents, we got our moneys worth indeed.
There was usually a western feature with a cliff-hanger that never seemed to end. Week after week we would return to see how the poor devil got out of the jam he was in only to face the same thing all over again. Someone or other was about to get cut in two by a saw...a train was heading for a damsel tied to a train track or a horse and rider had fallen off a very high cliff. We talked about it all week, eagerly awaiting for Saturday to roll around again to see what had happened to the poor soul who was in peril.
When the pioneers were in trouble with Indian raids and such we clapped and screamed until we were hoarse as the posse came to the rescue.
The Cornwall Theater was located close to where I lived so I went to many movies there. There were several other theaters...The York, The Majestic, The Crescent,The Paramount, The Nickel and the Capitol ....some were in a bad state of disrepair but we didn't care. We were there to see the movie, not to critique the surroundings.
Christmas memories are plentiful and at that time of the year I didn't realize that we were poor. It seemed to me that we were rich in family, friends and love.
