James Griffin: All the days of the year

Yes, it frightens me, too, that I should have considered this issue, but it's my job and somebody's got to do it.

With that out of the way, I have to report that I have seriously wondered, in the course of writing this article, what the days of the year would look like if they were kids in a primary school photo.

Some were easy: Christmas Day is the chubby, happy kid; December 31 is the cheeky kid pulling faces at the camera, and the pale, sickly kid next to them is January 1. February 29 is the depressed kid with no mates who appears only in every fourth photo.

But what would Boxing Day, December 26, look like?

Would he be the bloated, dyspeptic- looking kid, after eating not only his but also Christmas Day's play-lunch? Would he be the manic kid in the back row, driving the photographer mental because he can't sit still, still on yesterday's sugar rush?

Or would it be a glum kid, because his toys were either wrong or uncool or broke the first time he used them? Or would he be a nerdy type with a calculator in his pocket, a horrified look on his face because he's realised how much money he would have saved if he'd done his shopping in the sales that started today?

So I seriously considered a school class photo with 365 pupils in it (about right on today's teacher/student ratios) in an effort to understand the essence of Boxing Day. Then I realised what an idiot I was being.

Because Boxing Day wouldn't be in the photo. Because the beauty of Boxing Day is that it's the one day of the year where you shouldn't have to be anywhere you don't want to be.

And why on Earth would you be in a stupid imaginary photo when you could be lying around at home or even at the beach if it's not raining? So there's this imaginary photo, of all the days of the year, and at the bottom is a caption that reads: Absent: December 26.