Get ready for those hot Boxing Day deals – and do absolutely nothing

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Are you ready?

You all limbered up? Have your hunting instincts twitched to life as you contemplate the glorious conquests that will be yours on the Boxing Day battlefield?

I mean, this year of all years, when every trip to the gas pump or grocery store should come with an emotional support paper bag to breathe into, it makes sense to chase those deals. So, are you ready to line up early and bash some skulls to get those sales and take revenge on inflation?

Here’s the thing: Don’t.

Stay home. Don’t shop. Refuse to go anywhere. Don’t even get out of your jammies. Eat inappropriate quantities of cheese and chocolate. Lightly day-drink. Take a nap. Watch a dumb movie. Read a magazine. Become one with your couch.

In a world and a moment that demands we constantly max ourselves out – especially, for many of us, in December – take Boxing Day to insist on extending a brief window of beautiful nothingness a little longer.

All of this applies whether you celebrate Christmas or not. There is really only one day on the entire calendar when the world shuts down, they turn out the lights, lock the doors and (almost) everyone goes home, and it happens to be Christmas. If the stores close on the panic-shoppers at 5 p.m. Christmas Eve and re-open, wallpapered in fresh, hollering Boxing Day signs at 8 a.m. on December 26, that leaves just 39 hours in which we all have no choice but to just be.

It’s a rare and precious commodity these days to be asked to accomplish nothing except to breathe and indulge in the sort of unhurried, quiet joys the rest of your life – the rest of our collective lives – usually leave no room for.

If we would just let it, Boxing Day could be an improved version of Christmas.

Christmas Day can be magical, but it’s also exhausting: Kids waking up in the “morning” that is blatantly still night; gifts to be co-ordinated and opened; meals to be cooked; family logistics and emotional landmines to navigate.

Boxing Day, though, has all of the indulgent pleasures of Christmas, with none of its obligations or pressures. No one going anywhere, nothing to buy or plan, no need to put on hard pants or your game face for the outside world – just sit and be a person. When do we ever get to do that?

I mean, there was that period of several months (and then years) when we were told to stay home and do nothing in our jammies to avoid a marauding virus. But for about 57 different reasons, that wasn’t super relaxing.

In normal times, doing wonderful nothing is so unusual that most of us can’t do it unless we’re forced to.

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland still require stores to stay closed on Boxing Day. The east coast has it figured out. My hometown of Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. kept Boxing Day shopping at bay until 2002, then went back and forth on the issue a couple of times after; that’s undoubtedly where I learned the value of purposeful festive laziness.

I love winter, and frankly have never understood the virulent hatred people feel for it. Winter is cold and dark and harsh, and that imparts everything else with a soft, warm glow. That feeling when you pass a lighted window on a snowy night, or step from the frigid outside into the warmth of a house? That’s winter.

Because of its very inhospitable nature, winter asks less of us and gives us permission to indulge in gentler pleasures. Summer is wonderful, sure, but any idealized season you have to “make the most of” like some extra on a beer commercial is slightly exhausting. Winter makes life smaller and softer, and that feels like something we all desperately need.

Remember several years ago when everyone discovered hygge, the Danish word that encapsulates the notions of coziness, creature comforts and taking time out of the blur of daily life to indulge in simple joys? And then the Norwegian word koselig got trendy, with its notions of embracing winter’s darkness and cold for the comforting experiences it offers, rather than being mad at it for not being summer.

A distilled version of all of that is exactly what Boxing Day should be. Of course, outside of the east coast where they have no choice, businesses are never going to relinquish another chance to rake in money – or stop hyping mediocre discounts to do so. So all that’s left is for each of us to opt out and instead give ourselves a slightly expanded snow globe of blissful, necessary indolence in which to dwell.

That thing you want to buy or those gift cards you’re itching to spend will still be there on Dec. 27. What will be gone is the moment when the world stood still, and we could all ask a little less of ourselves and inhabit our lives a little bit more.