I’d idly wondered all my life, but never bothered to look it up. Turns out there doesn’t seem to be one clear accepted origin of Boxing Day, but the general premise goes that on or before Christmas Day people would give gifts to people of the same social level or class. On what used to be the first weekday after Christmas, but is now the day after Christmas Day, upper social classes would, in some form, give gifts to those in lower classes — often a Christmas box. This might have been because they had worked for them during the year in one way or another, like giving a Christmas tip to the milkman, or simply as a gift, or because the lower classes were too busy serving the upper classes on Christmas Day and so couldn’t do the Christmas thing properly themselves.

As is often the case, the Snopes article about Boxing Day, has a useful synthesis.

Origins of Boxing Day

Rubberducking is the simple technique of explaining your code, or whatever you’re working on, to a rubber duck and, in the process of explaining it, finding the answer yourself. 

Have you ever been called over to someone’s desk to help them solve a problem, and as they explain the problem to you or demonstrate it, they figure out the answer themselves? It happens all the time to me, particularly when someone's showing me how something doesn't work, and it magically works just by having me watch over their shoulder. The rubber duck technique is as simple as that, except that instead of calling someone over, you can simply replace the person with a rubber duck, teddy bear or heck, even your stapler.

Rubberduck debugging is a term from software development where this sort of scenario happens a lot. Rubberducking is surprisingly effective and way cheaper than hiring a contractor for the day.

There is also the related empty chair technique for psychotherapy.

Rubberducking is not to be confused with "rubbernecking", which is slowing down to look at an accident as you drive past—a common cause of traffic jams.

Rubberducking

A word from the Sami people of Northern Norway, Finland or Sweden, from ‘coffee’ and ‘boil’, used as a measure of distance for how far you can go before you need a cup of coffee.

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