Gift Bags

So while yes, Jesse Weiner was the one who told me that there was no such thing as Santa, I still needed hard evidence. And my mother was not very good at covering up the no-Santa crime scene. She left evidence everywhere that would have made any child suspicious. The least of which was the wrapping paper. I wondered how it could be that both my parent’s gifts and Santa’s gifts were wrapped exactly the same way in exactly the same paper and exactly the same trim. It seemed implausible. Jesse seemed to have  correct information.

When my children were younger I did all my Christmas wrapping in coordinating papers with coordinating bows and coordinating tags.  I even trimmed special gifts with fresh pine or holly. I enjoyed being very Martha Stewart-like. I do not do that anymore. I prefer to use my time in other ways.

Nowadays all my gifts are placed in gift bags. Gift bags have improved holiday task completion as much as pre-lit Christmas trees and premade toll house cookie dough. Gifts can be made aesthetically pleasing in a flash. The added feature is that if you want to add (or delete) anything to the already pre-bagged gift you can do so with ease—no more carefully pulling up the scotch tape and sliding the box out to insert the forgotten or added item. And the best part is if you are thrifty, you can reuse the bag without the shame formerly attributed to people who tear-lessly unwrapped gifts so that they could save the gift paper.

And while the speed of which one can reveal a gift housed in a bag is greater than the speed of ripping open a wrapped present, I am over the consequential decrease in anticipation. And even if the price point of a bag is higher than that of a wrapped gift, I prefer the convenience of the gift bag.

My children were much older than I was before they discovered that there was no Santa. Maybe it was because I was a better covert operator than my mother— I was better at covering my tracks. Santa's wrapping paper was unique. I also expected my girls to be suspicious like I was . But it could also be because there was no Jesse Weiner living next door--- and gift bags hadn’t been invented yet.