For some, it’s an opportunity to express their creativity – and their love – for the people they’re presenting with a gift. For others though, it’s yet another task to be completed as the clock ticks down to Christmas Day.
Gift giving is a key part of the season and with that comes wrapping presents. While psychologists have long acknowledged that the anticipation of the reveal has a positive effect on our wellbeing, wrapping can also elevate something fairly mundane to an extraordinary offering, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, style.
Whether you spend two minutes or all afternoon working on the right way to wrap gifts, there’s no right or wrong way to wrap a present. Here are five wrapper “types” to watch out for. Which one are you?
Christmas wrappers come in different shapes and sizes but for some, it’s their time to shine.Credit: Getty Images/RooM RF
The Christmas creative
For the Christmas creative, the biggest gift giving season of the year is their time to shine. While most probably don’t have a permanent wrapping room, they have been looking forward to this all year, stockpiling materials. Those who live with a Christmas creative beware: they may want to set up a temporary station with everything at the ready, from an array of colour-coordinated Christmas themed papers to ribbons, bows, stamps and even foliage. Handy with a hot-glue gun, the Christmas creative will be able to wax lyrical about this year’s wrapping trends – as well as knowing where to find the sticky tape dispenser. Cards, naturally, will be handmade, the result of a crafternoon with like-minded friends after consulting Pinterest boards and crafting accounts on social media. Picking up a new skill, like origami, is all part of the fun.
Loading
Will family members appreciate all this effort? Highly unlikely. But then, for most Christmas creatives, that’s not the point. Instead, they will bask in the beauty of their efforts, however fleeting they may be, as their colour-coordinated gifts are assembled under the tree.
Let’s just get this done
These wrappers understand that part of the joy of Christmas is about the anticipation of what lies within but, either because they are time poor, or just the sheer volume of gifts they have to wrap, they are not inclined to waste time on fancy papers or wrapping techniques. Others are just not that into aesthetics. If it’s Christmas paper, we’re good. Indeed, the “let’s just get this done” wrapper often dispenses with cards altogether, preferring to write names directly onto the wrapped gift. As long as the present gets where it needs to go, it’s a win.
