As we are quicklycoming upon the winter solstice, many people have been discussing online and in person about how December 21st is the shortest day of the year. (Yes, I know they are also discussing the Mayan Apocalypse…but I’m not going there). The Winter Solstice is a reason to be optimistic for some since the amount of daylight increases steadily for the next six months, until we hit the summer solstice on June 21st which, by definition is the longest day of the year.
While from a scientific perspective this may be true, I have a different belief that June 21st is NOT the longest day of the year. In fact, it’s not even close.
It is my belief that Boxing Day is by far the longest day of the year!
Despite it’s British origins, Canadians by and large know Boxing Day as both the day after Christmas and the day when all unsold Christmas inventory must be cleared out by retailers at deeply discounted prices. Oddly enough the retail component of Boxing Day was actually illegal in Canada for many years, as stores weren’t allowed to open on a Statutory Holiday. As a result the actual Boxing Day sales began the day after Boxing Day.
This may have given retailers an idea for they discovered that Boxing Day doesn’t actually need to be celebrated on Boxing Day itself. Before we knew it, retailers were stretching Boxing Day to last right up until the end of the year. It wasn’t long after that the retailers wondered if the sell off momentum could help them carry into the next year, so they even stretched into as far as mid-January.
Boxing Day was becoming a long and drawn out affair but despite this, it wasn’t long before retailers wondered if they could just start the sell off early by stretching Boxing Day ahead of Christmas Day itself. I believe I saw my first flyer for a Boxing Day sale around the 11th or 12th of December this year, and this demonstrated that the limits to which Boxing Day can be stretched may indeed have no limits.
So if we did a simple approximation here and a little math, we can prove my point. If we use December 11th as the beginning of Boxing Day and we guestimate that we will likely see Boxing Day last with some retailers all the way until say…January 8th, we can create a rather ridiculous number.
Stretching over a staggering lifespan of some 696 hours in 2012/13, Boxing Day is BY FAR the longest day of the year!
It’s no wonder we feel so damn worn out, over spent and overwhelmed at this time of the year, and the proof is all in the numbers…
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