Guy Fawkes has fireworks. Halloween has candy. Christmas has carols.

But ask any fan: The best holiday of all is Boxing Day.

A massive meal and a bucket of booze is fun, yes, but inevitably the tinsel fades, edibles turn triangular and conversation moves toward, for example, why would anyone choose to live in China?

It's usually about this time that my mother turns to me and says, "When's the big game?"

Boxing Day is a time of year so magical that my mother expresses interest in, well, sport. Better still, she hands me a reason to exit conversation and head outside for fresh, winter seaside air.

Soon I join thousands of flatulent middle-aged males and their offspring squeezing into cold plastic seats. We suck on Fishermen's Friends and study the steam clouds around our blowholes. High above us among the floodlights, seagulls circle menacingly, seemingly knowing our team's imminent fate.

As home-grown fans, we didn't get to choose our team the way my Chinese friends simply study a Premiership menu and pick gongbao jiding, or "Manchester United" as we say in English.

Instead, every Boxing Day we suck on Polo mints and shudder as our muddy champions boot opposing ankles, clumps of frosty sod, even occasional seagulls, anything but the round object in the middle of the field.

When it comes to the beautiful game, my hometown has a unique history: Plymouth is the largest city in the United Kingdom never to have hosted a Premiership team, ever. Season after season of abject failure. And drizzle.

So every Boxing Day, we hardened fans gather at Home Park and wonder how it is the players seem to always look that little bit younger. We smile quietly as the younger fans complain bitterly that this referee, this match and this team are well, awful, truly, bloody awful.

Every Boxing Day we commune to share our futile, impossible faith, a great and unforgiving love for a club that never, ever delivers in the same way that Manchester United always seem to be able to score in Fergie time.

On Boxing Day we cling to that soggy, over-loved teddy bear of our youth, knowing that all this suffering builds character and that pointless, massive, unrequited love is the greatest love of all.

The author is a Beijing-based freelance writer. andyinbeijing@hotmail.com