I’ve never been one to care about wrapping presents. I’ve long viewed it as an arduous and paper-wasting activity. They’re going to rip it off and then ever think about it again? So, why bother?
But the things happened to me this gift-wrapping season that changed my mind:
- I watched a YouTube video whose basic premise was that “you don’t have to be bad at wrapping gifts—in fact, you can be pretty good at it without a ton of effort.” (This video, I think, is about half-true.)
- I saw a headline (that’s all it took!) about the care inherent in a well-wrapped gift. Having not even read the article, I mulled the headline for several days. It occurred to me that in our Christmas-consumerist mindset, where you buy your gifts online from the comfort of home and then have them delivered to your door, that wrapping a gift is the least you can do to show some care for the recipient.
- My wife reminded me that we are Santa. Santa, of course, not only wraps his gifts, but does it with a seriousness about the importance of gifts.
So, while I still did a somewhat shoddy job, my gifts were at least wrapped with my mind actually present…as opposed the looping thought of goddamn-Christmas-chore-waste-of-paper-going-to-get-torn-up-anyway.
Taylor Coe 