If the Boxing Day Test was just about the cricket there is no way Cricket Australia would have attracted anywhere near the 53,389 they got to the MCG on Saturday. 
It was the lowest day-one crowd since 1999, when only 49,082 came to the MCG for a day which featured barely half a day's play between Australia and India, due to rain.
As bad as the weather was until mid-morning, the standard of the contest between Australia and the West Indies - when it eventually began an hour later than scheduled - was worse. This was exemplified by Australia's David Warner hitting his first three deliveries of the day to the boundary.
The Twenty20-like pace dissipated thereafter but Australia's level of control did not as they finished the day on 3-345.
The two newest members of their batting line-up, Joe Burns and Usman Khawaja, spent part of Christmas Day posing together for deliberately cheesy photos. The presents they used as props were replaced on Saturday by gifts of real consequence: a Test century for each.
In the previous Test in Hobart, the West Indies' players were castigated for their body language, especially in the field. For much of Saturday they were at least able to hold their hat on having clearly tried harder than they did in the first Test - until those efforts came to nothing because of a horrible dropped catch late in the day by one of their most maligned players, Marlon Samuels.
Traditionally, crowds at Boxing Day Tests have progressively shrunk once the custom of being there on day one no longer applies. This is likely to be reinforced by the size of crowds attending today, and the unknown number of days which follow.