The Art of Opening
Gifts
Like all arts, gift wrapping requires concentration,
dedication and talent. Most of us don’t
have that much talent for making something immortal out of fancy colored paper,
ribbon and Scotch tape. Concentration
and dedication are not even considered, because we just want to get the whole
thing over so we can get on with something more fun, such as watching Christmas
movies on Lifetime or eating a lot of cookies.
The other popular Christmas art is opening gifts. Different people have different techniques
for peeling off the layers of paper and ribbon and revealing whatever treasure
or dreck is inside.
(A)
There is one adult female in every family who
sits and looks at a wrapped present and says, “It’s so pretty, I hate to open
it.” Her lack of perspective concerning
what is important (the present inside the wrapping) and what is not important
(the wrapping) and her hesitance to get on with it make everyone else want to
pick her up and shake her like a rattle.
When she is finally persuaded to disturb the wrapping, and
find out what she is getting, she VERY slowly and VERY carefully, with great
reverence, frees the gift of, first, the ribbon, then the paper. This gives her time to form a plan of how she
is going to react if the present inside is something she must hide in a closet
or re-gift to someone she hates.
(B)
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I have
never seen a man act like (A) above. Men
usually prefer to rip the damned paper open as fast as possible to see if, this
year, they lucked out and are getting something good for a change. There is still a certain art involved. A man can either rip open a gift with great
<i>élan</i>
or with great disinterest, knowing he is probably getting cologne, aftershave
or a tie for the fourteenth year in a row.
(C)
Women who are more impatient than (A) above – in
other words, the rest of us – usually take reasonable precautions not to tear
the wrapping too much while trying to get at whatever is inside. We were brainwashed by our mothers to save
used Christmas wrap from one year to another, and we still have Mom’s voice deep
in our psyches. That is the Voice of
Christmas Past, and it never goes away.
(D)
Some gifts, such as a new Harley, are too big to
be wrapped. In that case, nobody has to
open anything. They just have to figure
out how to get the thing out of the living room. This takes half the fun out of getting a
present, but it saves paper.
(E)
Many families have a joker who loves to put a
small sized gift into a large box with a lot of stuffing to take up the extra
space. I used to be one of those jokers,
until I grew up. This provides endless
fun to everyone except the recipient when the gift is opened. If an adult pulls this trick on another
adult, the present had better be something spectacular, if the gift giver knows
what’s good for him.
(F)
Kids are not concerned about such mundane things
as wrapping paper. If they are left to
their own devices, they will have pieces of mutilated gift wrapping all over
the living room floor by the time they get through opening their presents. Mom is usually watching, though, and making
sure that enough re-usable paper survives the yearly paper holocaust, to be
used again the following year. She
learned this from HER Mom, who learned it from HER Mom, who learned it from HER
Mom, who survived the Great Depression.
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| The Original Family Gift Wrapping Saver |
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