It's a Wrap.

Posted on December 18, 2008
Filed Under Love Style | Leave a Comment

In high school, my best friend, Tina and I had to gift-wrap presents during the holiday season at a major shopping center as part of a class we were taking in school.
We all worked really hard to make sure that everyone’s presents were wrapped with care, because people paid big bucks for our attention to detail.
The mall charged for the wrapping based on the size of the gift, and the type of paper, and some people spent up to $30 for gift-wrap and decorations! Can you believe it?
The first present The Boss ever got me was wrapped in a plastic bag and shoelaces, and I loved him for it.

I know that 98 percent of the fun of opening presents, especially when it comes to children, is watching them rip through the paper piece by piece.
When I was a kid, my parents always made sure they got two specific pictures of me at my birthday parties and on holidays: opening my gifts, and eating cake.

It’s like the gift-wrap helps all of us savor the moment.
As the paper sticks to fingers and gets thrown to the ground, children’s facial expressions (and some adults for that matter) start to form in slow motion, and as cameras flash and grown men scream, that $30 seems totally worth it.

But I think gift-wrap is a waste of money.

I think the presentation is pointless because kids don’t know if their gifts are wrapped in Hallmark wrapping paper or not – and they really don’t care.
Teenagers just want clothes and money (well, the girls anyway) so you might as well ask the teenyboppers in Brass Plum at Nordstrom to give you a gift box.
(And while you’re at it, you can shove the $50 in an envelope — they won’t keep the card anyway.)

When I was a kid, I used to wrap everyone’s gifts in comics from the Sunday paper, and when I started working as a reporter after college, I used old newspapers from the office.

If it was your birthday, I might pull something from the Sports section.
Having a baby? Maybe something from Arts & Living will look good around those little bibs I got you.
Got a new job? I might have skipped the paper I wrote for, and grabbed The Wall Street Journal from the driveway instead.
As for my friends who were a little on the high-maintenance side, I’d add a small bow for a little splash of color.

My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but not one year goes by when I don’t hear my Christmas-celebrating friends complain about how their holiday has become so commercial.
But maybe people have done it to themselves.

I was at Target the other day, and I saw a couple standing in front of the massive 40-foot wall of gift-wrap, and gift bags for nearly 15 minutes! They had a list of people’s names, and they were discussing which colors and patterns and bows should go on which gift.
If the holidays are about anything more than picking a shimmery blue roll of wrapping paper over one with a matte finish, than that couple didn’t get the memo.

We have two holidays in the year, but both come after very spiritual events. The first holiday, Eid-ul-Fitr comes after a month of fasting, and the second one, Eid-ul-Adha comes after the holy pilgrimage, Hajj.
It’s not that people don’t forget the spiritual purpose behind our holidays, of course they do. Mostly it’s through overeating after a month that teaches you self-restraint, and then coming to the mosque in a newsboy hat and stilettos after nearly three million people just preformed the holiest form of worship in Islam.

I don’t necessarily think the holiday season should be about sitting in a room and praying all day; the holidays are a time to celebrate with your loved one’s.

I just don’t think that the people who love you really care if their gift bag, or card, can sing.

 

MY PERFECT GIFT-GIVING METHOD:

Newspaper: my driveway.
Perfect blue bow: Target, (for the people in your life who demand too much).

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