Happy Boxing Day!¹

¹ Boxing Day is a Canadian tradition, whereby everyone² goes to the stores on the day after Christmas in order to (attempt to) take advantage of HUGE after-Christmas sales. It is the single largest shopping day of the year in Canada. People will literally wait all night at the front entrance of a store, in order to be the first one in when the doors open for business. No. I am not making that up.

² When I say "everyone" I actually mean: "a lot of people." However, I myself have never gone shopping on Boxing Day. I find that the stores advertise their mega-sales in order to lure you into their stores. But then they only offer extremely limited quantities of the items they advertised. So your chances of getting one of their killer deals³, is very minimal at best. Sure, you can get regular sale prices on a lot of other common items, but (to me) it is NOT worth the hassles, line-ups, traffic, and all the other annoyances that you will definitely encounter on this day. (I much rather prefer staying home to watch television, or maybe to try out my new Christmas gadgets. There aren't any traffic jams on the trip to my refrigerator!)

³ Having said all this, I must admit that there actually are some killer deals to be had.. it's just that you don't stand a very likely chance of ever getting one. One example of such a deal is a Winnipeg furniture store that offers a complete dining suite for 99% off of the regular price. The catch is that there is only one suite available, and they don't tell you where it is located within the store. Of course there are tons of people waiting to get this deal so as soon as the store opens, everyone madly runs about the store, trying to get lucky. Once the prize suite is found and claimed, the store hopes that all the other people will stick around buy something else, since they are already in the store and all. In my view, the whole day is a just a big gimmick. But have yourself a happy Boxing Day anyway, eh?