Happy “Boxing Day” everyone! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the holiday, Boxing Day is a day that celebrates the sport of boxing. Every year on December 26th, anyone aged 4-99 can put on a pair of boxing gloves and release their pent-up frustrations upon each other in a spirited round of fisticuffs (during the rest of the year, it’s back to bare-knuckle brawling and Brazilian capoeira). Some say that Boxing Day took its inspiration from the “Feats of Strength” that are celebrated during the Festivus holiday, but its origins certainly go back much further.

What’s that you say? Boxing Day is not about the sport of boxing at all? It’s actually the day when you collect up all of your unwanted Christmas presents, put them all in a large box, and then take them to a local store to exchange for LEGO sets? Who knew? … Wait. Now someone else is telling me that it’s the day we take all of the opened LEGO set boxes, instructions, etc. and take them down to the local recycling center... At this stage, I’m not sure what to believe. I guess I should try to find a reputable source on the interweb that can help clear this up for us.

Okay, I found it… Boxing Day is actually a holiday celebrated in Great Britain and some of the Commonwealth countries, and the name ACTUALLY comes from a time when the rich used to box up gifts to give to the poor. Nowadays they just give out cryptocurrency or make a donation to The Human Fund in your name. Boxing Day was traditionally a day off for servants, after having worked all day long on Christmas Day for the Toffs. It wasn’t until this day after Christmas when they received a gift box from the aristocrats that they served. In turn, the servants would then get to go home and give Christmas boxes to their own families. I guess I would have known all of this if had I spent even less time sorting my LEGO collection, and more time watching Downton Abbey with the wife.

Speaking of distributing gift boxes, let us quickly take this opportunity to say “THANK YOU!” to everyone who contributed in some way to the Creations for Charity fundraiser this year. Nannan Zhang reported that over $35,000 was raised in support of giving out LEGO sets to children in need, made possible by the huge success of the 24-hour live stream by Beyond the Brick, and donations from people like you. This is a new record for the fundraiser! Thank you all for helping to provide a little joy this time of year to children in need, in communities all over the world.

So it looks like Boxing Day really isn’t about the sport of boxing after all. Oh, well... Since I have already gone through the trouble of searching for cool LEGO boxing MOCs to share, allow me to highlight these “jammie dodgers” that I found anyway:

Getting All “Jacked Up”

Australia is one of those Commonwealth countries mentioned above that is known to celebrate boxing day. The earliest reports are of kangaroo boxing which date back to the early 1890s, with a kangaroo named Jack being forced to spar with a man known as Professor Lindermann at the Melbourne Waxworks in Australia. This is a rendition of what that scene might have looked like, created by Lego Master Builders from the USA and Czech Republic for the "On the Loose" exhibition at Sydney Wildlife World in 2011 (photo by Darren Cox)

Back in 2011, Lino Martins reimagined what a future kangaroo boxer might look like if it was a Rock ‘Em Sock ’Em robot. I give you the “Mecharoo!”

“Robo Rumble”

In 2019, Djokson hosted a building contest called “Robo Rumble” to inspire people to build boxing robots. To promote the contest, he built “Konk and Bop” to knock some sense into everyone to get them to participate.

And then last October, Djokson revisited this boxing theme by building the “King Crusher”. I’m pretty sure that those brass knuckles doubling as the business ends of a meat tenderizer would be illegal in the boxing ring, but stranger things have happened.

“I could have been a contender.”

Some memorable contenders from Djokson’s “Robo Rumble” were:

“Springloaded” Billy by Loysnuva

Robo Ruuuuuumble by Matt Goldberg

BR4W-LR Claptrap by _zenn

“The Winner, By a Knock-Out…”

Being a “red shirt” crew member of the original USS-Enterprise of Star Trek usually meant an untimely demise for a newly introduced character. In the world of LEGO boxing MOC’s however, it is the “red short” crew who are the ones left standing at the final bell. Need proof? Check out these two scenes by Josephine Monterosso and Vir-a-Cocha. As you can see, it’s the “blue-shorts” who are left laying with their backs against the mat.

First came Josephine’s robot boxing champ…

Followed by the knock-out punch from Vir-a-Cocha

Pugilistic puns

When the BrickNerd team heard I was looking for brick-built pugilists to highlight… well… of course they would come back with a long pug-list instead… <sigh>. After all this time, this classic from Marcos Bessa still stands atop the dog pile.

The Box(er) by Cornbuilder

In the blue corner, we have a pair of Tie-fighters by NS Brick Designs (Neck-Tie vs. Bow-Tie)

And in the red corner, we have “Rusty Balboa” by Markus Rollbühler

“The Fix” Is In

Adam Dodge says this match between Paper and Rock was fixed, but certainly everyone knows that paper always beats rock? Right?

In this next bout, however, there is no doubt that the fix was in… and by none other than Chris McVeigh (oof. This scene did not age well)

End of the Round-up

“Ding! Ding! Ding!”…. Whew. Finally saved by the bell. I hope you enjoyed this rather uninformative article about Boxing Day and all its glory. However you choose to celebrate (my vote is for unboxing new LEGO sets), we hope you have a great one!

Is Boxing Day a holiday in your part of the world? How do you celebrate? Let us know in the comments below!

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