Boxing Day

Today is Boxing Day in England. It's a public holiday and dates back to past centuries when it was the custom for the wealthy to give gifts to employees or to people in a lower social class, especially to household servants. Recently in England it's more likely that you'll find people out shopping, spending even more money as the post-Christmas sales begin that day. Today some of the big retailers opened at 7am to queues of shoppers hoping to bag a bargain....'7am??!!', I hear my American readers say, 'That's nothing'. On the day after Thanksgiving over here (Black Friday),shops regularly open at 4 or 5am to bargain hunters. What complete nutters.

As children, Boxing Day was our day to visit the rellies (relatives) after a Christmas Day spent at home. Most often we would travel up to Nottinghamshire where my Aunt and Uncle and Granny live. We would eat yet more roast dinner and Christmas pudding, pull crackers and open yet more presents. Wow! Two Christmas Days. We were lucky.

Today we are kicking back, eating left-overs and enjoying the peace and quiet. I went out to do some shopping (ok I didn't avoid shopping altogether, I was just out for food, not queuing for bargains).

This afternoon we went for our second walk of the day into West Chester, to the Chester County Historical Society on N High Street, which is about 10 minutes walk from our house. Inside there is a shop and a library/research area plus quite a large exhibition space full of information about local history. Most interestingly there are a number of 'rooms' which have been created with antique furniture, much of it by local craftsmen, to recreate homes of the past. We went because they currently have a Discovering Dollshouses exhibition running. I loved my dollshouses as a girl and although Lucy is a bit young for them, we thought she might like to go.

The exhibition was excellent - several dozen antique dollshouses were beautifully presented, many with rooms set up with furniture and dolls matching the era of the house. Our favourites were the house with the world's tallest man...the doll stood next to a doorway which he would have struggled to get through even if he was crawling, and the London townhouse dollshouse which was one of the only dollshouses with its front closed so that we couldn't see inside (even dolls in London don't leave their houses unlocked and goods on show :).

Lucy was very excited about the play area in the back corner. It had a wooden dollshouse complete with dolls, and furniture for her to play with, a Noah's Ark and a little tea party table and tea set...quite the favourite. She made us tea in tiny china cups and mainly enjoyed stirring the tea and making a loud ringing noise as the china spoon hit the china cup. No breakages luckily. All in all a very worthwhile visit and we'll definitely keep an eye out for the next interesting exhibit.