I Just Can't Fucking Wrap Christmas Presents

The BBQ Pit
1

I really enjoy Christmas and one of the things I like most is getting people presents. I love to get just the right present for people. It’s the one time of year I throw financial caution to the wind a little and make sure everyone I care about gets just what they want. My wife is even better at it than I am - in fact, she’s sort of taken the role over the last few years. She has a SPREADSHEET. She starts planning this stuff before Hallowe’en. But I always get some real good ones, as she’ll be happy to tell you as she plays with her new iPhone. So, we’re a hell of a team.

What I CAN’T fucking do is fucking WRAP the goddamn motherfucking things, for fuck’s fucking sake. I have no fucking idea what I’m doing wrong, but as a wise man (Clark Griswold) once put it, hallelujah, holy shit, where’s the Tylenol.

Every year I am determined that this year will be different. I watch my wife wrap presents and ask questions - the same questions as all previous years - to ensure I know how to do it. I examine resources online. I know the theory; I understand, fundamentally, how a present must be wrapped. I ensure that theory is refreshed and then I assemble my weapons; several types of wrapping paper, a good pair of scissors, and lots of Scotch tape. Also ribbon.

I start with the easy presents, the smaller ones that are box-shaped. Cut the paper, wrap around, triangle the ends… and I fuck it up. Every time. I try to triangle the ends and bring them up and they’re all scrunched up and wrong and fucked. I stare at the present in amazement. The paper has all shifted and creased. Repair attempts are useless and, sighing, I tape it together and throw a tag on it.

I always have at least ten presents to wrap and it always goes like this:

Present 1: Amazement it’s not working right
Present 2: More amazement
Present 3: Frustration sets in; determination Present 4 will be better
Present 4: It’s not
Present 5: Begin to swear
Present 6: Goddamn motherfucking cockblaster fuckstacker scotch tape fuck shit
Present 7: Weeping begins
Presents 8 and up: Now just randomly slapping paper and tape on things, most of them presents, with me gibbering and drooling and laughing hysterically.

I finally end up with a pile of presents that were all thoughtfully selected, purchased with love (many months ahead of Christmas) and now presented in a wrapping style evocative of craft hour in a class for children with special needs. Each present looks like a festive lump of turds, tape and paper sticking out in odd angles. Without fail, despite my hardest efforts, every present has a part where you can see the white side of the wrapping paper. Often I try to tape that down.

I’ve been wrapping presents, or trying to, for 25-27 years or so - I can’t remember how old I was when I find started buying my own presents - and I have never, ever gotten this right. FUUUUUUUUCK. I know how it works; I can understand it conceptually. I am not afflicted with a disease that inhibits by hand-eye coordination or spacial perception. But I cannot. Fucking. Wrap. Presents. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

2

I am not a born wrapper in the least.

The mangling and mauling I have done to various gifts through the pretty paper is cringe worthy, to say the least.
I opt for two things:

  1. Gift bags.

  2. Let my husband do it.
    Failing that, I like to use newspaper to wrap presents and for some insane reason, when I use this freebie, all is well. I think it is the pressure of using Really Pretty And Expensive Wrap and knowing I get ONE SHOT at making it right just overwhelms my anal retentiveness and I become like a two year old trying to do the job.

3

I used to take great care in wrapping, due to an unspoken wrapping competition amongst my sisters-in-law. One year, one of them used silver paper, flocked it, and glued trees and ice skaters to the little man-made rink.

I have since given up trying to make fabulous presentations. Mine are adequate, but not spectacular. Spectacular costs too much time and money.

One word of advice, though: wrapping at the table works better than wrapping on the carpeted floor. You get better creases and it just works better.

Also, I think the 3-pieces-of-tape rule only applies to people who are naturally good at wrapping. The anchor piece has proved helpful in many a wrapping project at Kasa Kalhoun.

4

I suck at it too, and it’s really frustrating.

I end up using a lot of stickers.

Oh actually- I saw a cool video a while ago about how to wrap things using cloth instead of paper. I’ll look for it and post a link, because it looked a hell of a lot easier than trying to get the paper all precise… cloth is a lot more expensive, but for gifts within the family you can use it over and over. It won’t help this time, but maybe next year.

edit: http://vimeo.com/2321507 <– there it is.

5

Spectacular goes inside, the paper is just to hide it.

6

Maybe train the year round; wrap something in newspaper every night before bed.
(might work wonders for your hand-eye coordination ;))

7

It’s a guy thing, Rick. More of us can do brain surgery than can wrap presents. Consider it a sign of your masculinity.

(Yeah, I know, now that I’ve said that, we’ll get guys saying, “I can wrap any present perfectly in 7.4 seconds, I’m the Ultimate Fighting champion in seven states, and I can kick your ass”. Pay no attention. They’re exceptions.)

8

Hmmm, this gives me an idea. I love wrapping presents and I’m really good at it. But I have no gifts to wrap, as all my nieces and nephews are at a point in life where they prefer green, folding gifts inside a card. (It’s easier for me too…I hate to shop. I don’t mind spending the money, but I hate going to stores and I never have a clue what other people really want.) When the kids were little, everyone knew without looking at the labels which gifts were from me: they said they all looked almost like jewels. Perhaps, next year I could offer free gift-wrapping services: you supply the paper and ribbons and I’ll do the work. Set up a little stand by the road, you know, like a produce stand, only different.

Freddy the Pig: it’s not speed that matters, it’s precision! Yeah, that’s it, I’m a detail guy.

9

Look at it this way–at least you still try. My father’s family loves, loves, LOVES to use gift bags, and it’s no. damn. fun. I’d rather have it badly wrapped than shoved in a bag.

(I think I get this attitude from my mother–she wraps everything, even if it’s just skratch tickets)

10

I’ve always been terrible at wrapping presents. I used to make my sister wrap everything but what I bought her. Now I either muddle through or put things in bags. My sister has always wrapped presents beautifully even as a child, and I have always done a fairly crappy job. It might be due to the fact that she is not nearly as clumsy or uncoordinated as I am.

Hmm, does this mean that I am a guy after all? Well, I won’t have to change my name, at least.

11

You rang? :smiley:

I’m a great present-wrapper. I saved everyone’s butt in a present-wrapping situation a couple of weeks ago when the presents were out on the living-room floor and they were having trouble holding the kids back from coming down the stairs. All of the presents. Wrapped. In ten minutes.

I credit my artistic tendencies. If that makes me less of a ‘man’, tough. I don’t kowtow to outdated cultural stereotypes. I fart and belch, too.

12

My Wife can’t wrap, but for some reason, I’m spectacular at it. I mean even without planning the patterns in the paper often match up and you can’t even find the seam. It’s just weird.

So, guess who gets to wrap everything?

13

So I went to the neighbor’s house to drop off a gift for the triplet kids. I was anticipating a storybook setting, with everything just “so” and perfectly christmassy. Like right out of a Victorian christmas card or something.

What I got was a house that looked like a bomb was detonated in it. Crap all over the place, a snowman collection (at least 20 pieces) all on one tiny shelf, and… gift bags. Not only were they gift bags…but each and every one of them was white. Flat, plain paper white. No stickers, no bows. Just white bags with the kids’ names written in red magic marker. Talk about your burst bubble!

14

You must be related to my brother!

The guy can pack a suitcase with more clothes than should be physically possible, and they unpack with fewer wrinkles than when they went into the suitcase! So it’s not like he’s got some spacial visualization problems!

However, his kids can wrap presents better than he can… even the 2 year old who would rather eat the paper than use it for wrapping!

The worst was the year he tried over and over again to get a nicely wrapped present for his wife. He tried until he didn’t have enough paper left in one piece to cover the present. So it ended up with various pieces of papers stuck to the present. And the paper had stripes, some of which he put on horizontally and some vertically. It was completely covered, but boy it was a mess!

15

The fiancee worked at Hallmark when she was in high school, so she’s an expert wrapper. You should see the things she can do with ribbon and a sheet of paper!

Thus, I put her gift(s) in a gift back with that tissue stuff, and make sure it’s a good one so she’ll wrap all my other ones.

ETA: Hallmark will wrap your gifts for you, including stuff you didn’t buy there. They only charge for materials, too (although I suggest you tip well). She told me she wrapped a bicycle for a customer once.

16

I like to wrap presents and I do a pretty good job at it. I especially like trying to wrap oddly shaped presents without making wrinkles or bulges in the wrapping paper.

I think it’s because:[ul][li]One Christmas I volunteered to wrap presents for Santa’s Anonymous - even the people who weren’t good at wrapping improved a lot after a few hours and wrapping dozens of boxes.[/li][li]I know how to do origami - it makes you a lot better at doing precise folding on the first try.[/li][/ul]

17

My husband is the better wrapper than I. Somehow, I can screw up wrapping a perfectly rectangular box, whereas he can get some weird polygon to look good.

18

Give me some clay and I’ll sculpt you a tiny, perfect human form. Give me some cardstock and glue and I’ll build a model of a house. Give me tape and wrapping paper and I’ll flap about like a drug-addled monkey. There may even be some cries of, “Ook! Ook!”

I can’t comprehend it. I’m artsy and good with my hands, but wrapping presents is just something I fail at every time. My applied geometry skills go flying out the window when I’m faced with gifts to wrap. It usually takes me days to wrap all of my presents, because I have to get up, pace, drink, and swear after every gift.

19

I know how to wrap gifts, I’m just lazy, so I prefer gift bags. There more environmentally sound anyway. That paper is pretty much a one shot deal, but gift bags can be re-used by the receiver. So basically, when you give a gift with a gift bag, it’s like giving two gifts in one. Speaking of which, I’d better get cracking. Those gifts aren’t going to sets themselves in the bags. :slight_smile:

20

I buy things at upscale department stores so I can then carry my stuff over to the gift wrapping station and have no more input than “Yes, silver is fine. Sure, a bow would be great, here’s $5. Yes, happy holidays to you too” Otherwise my present wrapping skills will have it end up like one of Calvin’s model airplanes. One year when that wasn’t an option I just rolled the gifts into the paper and twisted the ends up like a piece of candy.