Wigan artist puts Boxing Day tradition in academic book on folk customs

Anna FC Smith was invited to contribute an essay about the annual December 26 celebrations in the town to the Routledge Companion to English Folk Performance, a work which will be placed in university libraries and used by students across the country.

Click here to see a gallery of pictures from Boxing Day 2005.

Anna has now spent several years researching the history of the post-Christmas revels involving people heading out in fancy dress costumes which have attracted national attention for Wigan in recent years.

Anna’s contribution to the volume is made up of an impressionistic account of a Boxing Day night out in Wigan and a more academic section of text looking at the varying origins of the tradition and how it functions in the life of the borough.

Anna was approached to write the book by its editors Peter Harrop and Steve Roud after working with well-known folklorist Doc Rowe and said it was a delight and an honour to be able to do so as the duo putting the book together are two of the biggest names in the field.

She said: “This is a dream come true. I was asked if I would write something on my research and talk about the way Wigan’s Boxing Day functions as a living archive.

“It’s an absolute privilege to do this. Wigan Boxing Day is now officially a folk custom. Obviously it always was one, but now it has been recognised as more than just a party, as a unique thing that Wigan has got. That is amazing.

“For the first part I’ve written an impressionistic account of a Boxing Day night, though in a slightly more literary style.

“I wanted to give the reader an impression of the atmosphere and excitement, the raucousness of it and what happens on the dancefloor.

“There’s also a more academic side putting together all the different origin stories and how it functions.”

Anna put out a public request for information when she began looking into Boxing Day fancy dress in more detail several years ago and spoke to a number of people.

Ahead of writing the book chapter she did another series of one-to-one interviews to gain further insight into the tradition.

Her research suggests that Boxing Day in Wigan has no one founding point but rather comes from a number of similar fancy dress celebrations just after Christmas which took place in the 1970s, including parties at Wigan Rugby Union Club and groups of charity collectors for Wigan and Leigh Hospice in Poolstock.

Anna’s contribution to the book emphasises how the tradition can mean different things to different people.

She said: “There’s always a mix of standard costumes through to really niche ones.

“Costumes talk about recent political events or recent TV shows, stuff that affects people, but some are also in-jokes among really small groups of friends that are a custom just for them.

“I look at the way people parade down King Street, the way people interact with each other, the friendliness and openness and the way everybody is on a level in costume so anyone can talk to anyone.

“This is a massive group effort. There are many different faces of Boxing Day, there are all these different connections and many different experiences of the night.

“It’s hard for one writer to sum up. I have my own perspective but it was important that as many people provided information as they could.

“I’m also trying to get across that it’s a very democratic event. As many people as take part in it have an opinion on it.”

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