Let’s see the hands all of you who love to wrap presents… or even like to wrap presents. OK, I’ll settle for ‘tolerates’ gift wrapping. Thank you. Both of you can put your hands down now.
I know the members of this tribe are few and far between, but I am a card carrying member of “love-to-wrap-presents” tribe.
If I ever had a million dollars to design and build a house, it would have one room designed just for gift wrapping. I’ll admit, as much as I love to wrap presents, it’s getting the stuff out , putting it away and finding a place that takes a lot of the fun out of it. So, my room would have that stuff all designed in and installed year round.
I’ve always thought of gift wrapping as an artistic adventure. Next to cookies, it’s the best part of Christmas… even birthdays, for that matter!
One year, during the Holiday Home Show at the Civic Auditorium, Trig and Mike Marshall (original owners of Marshall’s Florists) had the entire stage set up with demonstration trees. One of them was done up in colonial blue and dusty pink, (this was the early ’80s , after all). I remarked to Mike that tree, of all the trees, looked like it belonged in my living room. Guess where it ended up? So, my goal that year was to wrap all my presents in colonial blue/pink/silver. Sure, there were other presents under the tree, but they got stacked under the color-coordinated ones (well, at least for the pictures).
The one exception I have found to all this fun is when you have to wrap presents to be shipped. You KNOW they’re going to get smushed and mangled. And, since my son and his family (my only grandchildren) have lived overseas for most of the last 20 years, there has been a lot of smushed wrapping.
Except for the first year they were in Italy, when I spent two months with them, I went for Thanksgiving and stayed through all the holidays, including President’s Day. As is the case when I visit any of my kids during the holidays, they save up their presents that need to be wrapped. Well, my youngest grandson was four at the time and he thought it was absolutely the most fascinating thing to watch me wrap “purr-sents.” He wanted to wrap too, so I gave him some old scissors and a bunch of my scraps and tape. He was a happy camper… except, we adults had to make sure anything we didn’t want to have gift wrapped, stayed above the reach of a four-year-old.
Of course, one of my favorite ways to wrap a present is to find a box where the lid fits clear down over the rest of the box, then wrap that lid so that it lifts off. My mother and I had a box like that in which I had received an 8th grade graduation present. We were still giving that box back and forth when she passed away some 35 years later. It’s been recovered a half dozen times and whatever is in it is not nearly as important as getting the box, itself. I think my daughter has it now.
I’ll have to see if I get something in it this year.
Adrienne Jacoby is a 40-plus-year resident of Shasta County and native-born Californian. She was a teacher of vocal music in the Enterprise Schools for 27 years and has been retired for 11 years.
A musician all her life, she was married to the late Bill Jacoby with whom she formed a locally well -known musical group who prided themselves in playing for weddings, wakes, riots, bar mitzvas and super market openings. And, oh yes . . . she has two children, J’Anna and Jayson.
