She doesn’t put them out until the children have gone to bed, not sure wherebouts in the house she hides them before that.
I don’t like to wrap stuff because it’s too much like work. It’s good for kids, though.
Nowadays, I don’t often visit my family at Christmastime, so it’s kind of a moot point.
When there are kids involved, wrapping is mandatory. Otherwise, play it by ear. Any grown person who is hung up on having their present wrapped has deep problems.
We never wrap. Instead my family has evolved this ritual:
- Recipient is told to close their eyes.
- Giver removes present from hiding and places it, regardless of girth or heft, on recipient’s head.
- Recipient grabs present and while holding it on their head tries to guess what it is.
Ah, I see you know my sister 
Personally, I enjoy wrapping presents, even oddly-shaped stuff because of the “what the hell’s that?” factor.
One of the best was when my brother-in-law bought the sister mentioned above a keyboard and stand and wrapped it with two big black garbage bags duct taped around it and a bunch of bows stuck to the top. It looked like a really festive body bag.
I once had some gifts professionally wrapped at the mall. I watched how they did it… they folded the edges of the paper over so that they were taping down a fold, not an edge, and they put the tape on the underside and folded it under, so that no tape showed on the finished package. That is how I have wrapped presents ever since. I also sometimes fold up an origami animal to put on in addition to the bow. I like really well-wrapped gifts.
The first Christmas I was with my then-boyfriend now-husband, he brought out my present to me wrapped up… well, more like bundled up… in a bedsheet. After seeing him do this (towel, sheet, bathrobe, whatever was handy) to not only me but other people, I finally convinced him that even though he had the best of intentions, it gave the signal that he couldn’t be bothered to wrap the gift, and seemed like he didn’t care. He stopped doing it eventually.
My wife’s mom would do that, hiding the (wrapped!) presents until Christmas morning. She did that even when they were older.
In my family, it was great seeing the number of presents under the tree grow and grow until they wouldn’t fit. You need to compromise when family traditions are different between you and your spouse, and I did my share of compromising, but not on that one.
Last year I gave my wife a new office chair and our son-in-law a pants press. We would have lost both of them with this technique.
Since I refused to partake in any gift exchange traditions, I have been much happier and financially sound (been about 15 years now).
Besides the gift exchange, I have always been baffled by the tradition of wrapping the gift.
So I guess I have to go with unwrapped.
Unwrapped! Unwrapped??!!
Who are you heathens? I’ve never heard of such a thing! Even at least just a gift bag with some tissue paper. Unless it’s a creative naked present style such as Mithras describes, unwrapped gifts is unfathomable among my friends and family. That would be, just… weird.
Wrapped presents under the tree (outgoing near the beginning of December, incoming closer to the day) are a part of our Christmas decorations! It is so depressing to see the tree first put up with no gifts under it!
I will confess that I also love wrapping presents. I am not a very crafty person so when I finish with a gift and it’s all prettified I feel a big sense of accomplishment. I even go to a special store to find square boxes for oddly-shaped or sized gifts so they can get the royal wrapping treatment.
On top of that, our children open all their presents on Christmas morning. The only people there are them, my husband and me. That means I need them to open them one at a time so I can take note of what was from whom so the gift givers can be thanked appropriately (we all call each other on Christmas morning to wish a Merry Christmas and thank for the gifts, I have done so as long as I can remember).
Wrapped… Once the tree is set up presents start going under it as they are bought and wrapped. Actually they show up in bunches because they are bought a few at a time and then the wife and I do late night wrapping on the weekends.
Santa presents show up Christmas morning and are usually wrapped in “special Santa paper”. The kids see all the rolls of paper except one roll that is stashed away and kept hidden. That way the Santa gifts don’t match any paper they have seen. And Santa never uses gift tags like all the other gifts. He writes in Sharpie right on the paper. The only gifts that don’t get wrapped are the large bulky ones such a bikes, or the ATV my daughter got. Those get special letters from Santa telling them the gift is out on the porch.
Wrapped, definitely, apart from the odd stocking pressie. The issue with Father C using the same paper as mummy and daddy has crossed my mind, but I reckon we’re ok till next year if we’re lucky - my oldest is just 5 and she’s fully bought in to the Christmas mystique. I don’t think she’ll be trying to catch us out yet.
I’m a Christmas obsessive, it’s the source of some of the sweetest memories from what was a pretty great childhood. I fully appreciate that it is kind of childish but I insist on my presents being wrapped, even if I know what they are. One year (embarrassingly recently) my mum bought me a coat, I wore it for a couple of weeks before Christmas, but she still wrapped it up Christmas Eve and put it under the tree for me. The sight of a Christmas tree surrounded by presents is one of my favourite things. I genuinely prefer to give than receive, and I’d be happy with a bag of boiled sweets as long as they were wrapped individually!