Today, while I was at the homeless drop-in centre called Off The Fence, just chatting and getting to know the chaps there, I met a gentleman named Steve, who is a volunteer there, and he told me about an interesting (and in my opinion, brilliant) tradition that he and his family have;
On Boxing Day in England, instead of going on a spending rampage, most people go on a killing spree. It is traditional to go fox hunting, fishing or shooting upon the day after Christmas.
It was not explained to me why this is, but really, do we need a logical reason to have a tradition?
But instead of a pheasant killing, Steve has something he calls A Gnome Culling.
In the months proceeding Christmas, he obtains as many ugly and tasteless pieces of decorative frangible - of which category the common garden gnome is a prime example - anything that unites dripping sentimentality with an obvious urgency on the part of the maker to make it as cheaply as possible within a minimum expenditure of time (in Steve's words, "An insult, a burden, and a source of legitimate rage to any intelligent individual.") - so that he can administer a small amount of cleansing to this old world by dispatching them in his back garden, with his pellet gun, on the twenty-sixth of December.
I must add that I have every intention of establishing a Canadian chapter of this tradition in my own family when I return.
Steve is a wonderful man - one of the many lovely people that I am meeting in this job. He taught me to play chess last Friday, and was so concerned that I learn the gambits, that he accidentally let me win...twice.
